


The Mummer's Tale

by OUATLovr



Series: Rose Fangs and Wolf Thorns [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Braavos, Butterfly Effect, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Dark, Disturbing Themes, Established Relationship, Exposition, F/M, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, POV Multiple, Please read RFWT before this or you'll have no idea what's going on, Pregnancy, Sad Ending, The House of Black and White, Unreliable Narrator, historical bias about abortion, in-between fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-09 21:56:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 62,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18646873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OUATLovr/pseuds/OUATLovr
Summary: "The tale of the Merling Queen’s death was a…disturbing one, and one which would no doubt haunt Braavos for years to come."Takes place between chapters 400 and 435 of RFWT.





	1. Merebeth

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, I have no self-control and couldn't even wait a week to start posting again, guys.
> 
> This is NOT the sequel to RFWT, guys, just to be clear. It's the story of what happened to Tyrion and Shae in Braavos, with our favorite assassin getting involved. Most of this is already written. 
> 
> A lot of RFWT readers have been curious about what really happened in Braavos, and while it didn’t really fit into RFWT given how long that monster is, I decided to make it it’s own little in-between fic while you guys wait for the sequel, so at least you have something, since there are no guarantees on how long that'll be. 
> 
> This isn’t going to make a lot of sense to people who haven’t read RFWT, although I know that’s a monster of a read. 
> 
> Suffice to say, Joffrey lived, everyone thinks Margaery is dead so the Tyrells turned on the Lannisters and Tyrion left Sansa with the Tyrells as a gift, Tyrion is in Braavos for suspicious reasons, and the Lannisters are pretty screwed as the Tyrells march on King’s Landing from without, and the High Sparrow is trying to take it over from within. 
> 
> Also, it's been a while since I read Arya's chapters, so bear with me if I get some things wrong.
> 
> Anyway, let me know what you think!

"You're not holding it correctly," one of the Mermaids told her primly, and Merebeth glared at her, annoyance rippling through her as she reminded herself that she could cut through this silly girl’s throat like butter, if she wanted to, and instead she was forced to pretend she was a simple young thing, in thrall.

She stumbled a little bit, standing on the pleasure barge as it wandered through the waters of Braavos. She was unused to standing so long on this boat, when its drivers were drunken as they plotted a course from where they had picked up the Merling Queen in her manse, to the Sealord’s Palace, halfway across the city.

It was a strange thing, these Braavosi people’s obsession with riding boats everywhere, rather than horses. She supposed it made sense, when their city lived atop a lagoon, but dear gods, did she tire of ships.

The Mermaid sighed, reaching out and snagging her fingers, and Merebeth succeeded in not flinching away from that harsh touch only at the last minute, reminding herself that she was not Arya Stark.

She was not No One, either. Not yet.

The Waif and the Kindly Man made that very clear.

Her name was Merebeth, the illegitimate daughter of a minor merchant who wished a better fate upon his child, thus placing her in the care and instruction of the Merling Queen.

Merebeth tried not to wonder if her father would ever have done such a thing.

She adjusted her hands around the Merling Queen's veil as she had been instructed to, and blushed the way shy, innocent Merebeth would when the Merling Queen turned around and eyed them suspiciously.

The suspicion did not last, her eyes softening as they landed on Merebeth, and then the Merling Queen was smiling at her, her painted face as genuine as Merebeth believed it could be.

One of the Mermaids had suspiciously died, five nights ago. A sad occurrence, but of course she needed to be replaced as soon as possible. They said the Merling Queen had even cried for her, and the Merling Queen did not often spare her tears, especially for poor wretches.

Merebeth had taken that fourth place, and she was not going to lose it now, not when this was only her second day under the woman's instruction.

"She is quite young," the Merling Queen had said, the day Merebeth's father, a kindly man whose face No One had carved off a dead man, brought her to the courtesan and begged her to take her on as a student, because that was the best future he could find for her.

He had nodded, sadly. "But she is a quick learner," he had promised, with a harsh look in Merebeth's direction, "and she will do as she is told. She yearns to be taught by one who can provide her with the best of educations in Bravos."

The Merling Queen had altogether preened, at those words, and Merebeth had marveled that she had ever thought these women anything more than shallow. "She is pretty," she agreed, reaching out and touching Merebeth's hair.

She said it in the sort of clinical way that one spoke of a roast pig, and it had taken much of Merebeth’s training not to flinch back in disgust, at the woman’s touch.

It took everything within Merebeth not to flinch away from the touch.

Her father nodded. "She is," he agreed, equally emotionless, but he had a better reason for that, No One thought. "So. Will you take her?"

The Merling Queen had smiled down at Merebeth, circled around her, came in front of her again, and nodded. Her voice, when she spoke, was cold, and did not match her smile.

"She will start at the lowest position, as all my girls do," she said. "And when she is no longer blooming into maidenhood, I will throw her out of my chambers as I do them, for they can tend for themselves then.”

Merebeth shuddered, glancing up at her father nervously.

Her father looked so proud. The expression looked so very wrong, on a Kindly Man's face, which she had never known to show much emotion.

"Good," he said, and left her standing in the middle of the Merling Queen's chambers, surrounded by girls and so very alone.

The Merling Queen had immediately set her to the task of emptying her chamber pot, filled with a black sort of sludge that it took Merebeth several moments to identify as vomit.

Vomit with poison in it.

She glanced up sharply at the Merling Queen, met her eyes, and went to empty the pot. Paused just outside the doorway in the realization that she did not know where to empty it.

She had stepped back inside, the Merling Queen giving her another assessing look. "Girls," she said loudly, "This is Merebeth."

Merebeth blinked; the girls already knew that; they had been standing in the room just moments ago, when her father was still here.

"Hello," one of the girls said, reaching a hand out as if to shake Merebeth's, and Merebeth cleared her throat, setting down the chamber pot in her hand to take the other girl’s.

She reminded herself that she was a shy, awkward little thing with some gift at whoring that her father saw deep within her, and she wondered if her own father, in her other life, might have slit her own throat before forcing her into such a fate.

One by one, the mermaids introduced herself, and Merebeth forced herself to repeat their names in her head until she remembered them, because that would be important, because knowledge was skill, as one of the girls volunteered, with a slight sigh, to tell her where to take the chamber pot.

"You'll have the worst jobs until you’ve learned your place," she was told, as they walked through the long corridors of the Merling Queen's beautiful home, just inside the city. Merebeth wondered how many lovers it had taken, to finance such a home. "I do not envy you. I was the fourth girl, before...Tiatana died. And the Merling Queen isn’t kind.”

Merebeth flinched, watching the sludge make its way out onto the ground. She remembered being Arya Stark, in a different lifetime, and never having to handle her own chamber pot.

Perhaps she had been too cruel to Jeyne Poole, even if the other girl had been cruel to her, in turn.

She shook her head, violently. She was not Arya Stark; she was Merebeth, the bastard, and there was no reason for her to be unfamiliar with a chamber pot.

"I don't mind," she said quietly, glancing up at the other girl and remembering Merebeth’s sad life. "My father's wife was very cruel to me, when I was younger. I did these sorts of things all the time, and I was happy to. Besides, she is the Merling Queen.”

She would have to adjust herself accordingly.

The girl looked at her for a moment, and then stuck up her nose. “Well,” she said, “you’ll find that she shits and vomits like all of the rest of us.”

Merebeth breathed out slowly. "How...how did Tiatana die?" she asked, imbuing a hesitance into her tone which she had not felt in a long time.

The other mermaid was silent for a moment, and then shrugged. "They said that she was with child, and the Merling Queen told her to be rid of it. It did not...go well for her. Sometimes that happens, when the mother is just a child herself.”

She didn’t say it as if she felt pity for the other girl, only annoyance, that she had gone and gotten herself impregnated.

Merebeth flinched, and thought of the Waif who had been given the order to make a place for Merebeth amongst the Merling Queen's ladies.

She had not looked happy to do so, but she had done it.

And now here they were, two days later, and the Merling Queen had been paid to accompany some noble to this play, on the Sealord’s pleasure barge, where he took his evening meals, apparently, because he was grossly rich and could do so. The Merling Queen had not inquired what the play was about, she told her Mermaids, but they were all to dress in their finest and accompany her, as they always did on such outings.

The gentleman was paying enough for her to buy a new gown, she had said, some excitement in her tone, before she frowned again, looking at Merebeth.

"I suppose the money shall have to go toward one for you, instead," she said, but was not unhappy with the prospect for long. "Good. You're desperately in need of one."

Merebeth had not learned much, from her days so far with the Merling Queen.

There was something about watching her from afar that was enchanting, fascinating, because a girl did not understand it.

Merebeth watched the Merling Queen eat some sort of poison after lying with her many lovers, and vomit away what might have become a child, given some months, before she handed her chamber pot to Merebeth to be rid of.

It was not so enchanting, now.

But the Merling Queen was just as graceful up close as she was from afar, and Merebeth supposed it was no hardship to hold her veil as she took the arm of noble after noble, gleaned their secrets and their coins, and was never suspected of doing either. The most beautiful courtesan in Bravos, and the most dangerous, a girl personally thought.

There was much a girl could learn from a woman like the Merling Queen.

"Shall we sit?" the Merling Queen asked her companion, with a bright smile, as they moved towards the table on the barge where the feasting had already begun, when the nobles were not still dancing and chatting together. "My legs are growing tired, and I think that you should go and fetch me a glass of wine."

Her companion smirked at her, reaching out and touching her arm. "I shan't be long," he promised her, perfect ardor in his voice, and Merebeth wondered if he had a wife at home, and wondered if that wife knew about the Merling Queen, as the rest of Braavos seemed to.

When a girl in another life had been a child, she hadn’t understood the haughty looks that her sister often sent their half brother, hadn’t understood why her mother was always so cold towards him.

Now, she looked out at the men who so fawned over this Merling Queen, and she felt nothing but disgust towards all of them, that they were so easily enchanted by a pretty face, and nothing more.

The Kindly Man said that many of these nobles who enjoyed the Merling Queen's company had a wife at home.

The Kindly Man said that she could not kill the Merling Queen until she learned how to become her.

The Kindly Man had said there was no reason for No One to know why the Merling Queen should die, only that the Many Faced God demanded it.

But it was not her place to think about that; if Merebeth was to learn from the Merling Queen enough to one day become her, she would have to put such thoughts aside for good.

It should be easier for her than to stop thinking about Arya Stark forever.

It reminded her, this gorging a little of the men who frequented the taverns, back when she was a girl. Her stepmother would send her out to fetch items that she wished for, to barter with the tavern lords when they were lower in their monies and trying to find some easier sells.

They dearly loved to gorge themselves on whatever it was they wished, though usually that was whores.

Merebeth shook her head; she had been a lonely child, and had seen far more than she wished to, during her young life. She supposed that was why her father had thought her so good at this sort of work, though she had never taken to being a proper lady in the past.

She licked her lips; the Kindly Man had instructed her, and she had quickly learned, during her time as Cat, that it was easier to think of herself as the person that she was pretending to be if she wanted to survive, if she didn’t want to be caught off track.

It was easier than she had expected it to be, once she had gotten used to it, to become that sort of person.

Or rather, it was easy for Merebeth.

“Ah,” the Merling Queen said then, with something like a smile on her features, as she glanced around at the other men and women sitting around the long feasting table of the pleasure barge. “Gentlemen. Ladies. You are all looking well, tonight.”

Out of all of the things she had encountered since arriving…growing up in Braavos, Merebeth didn’t quite understand that, why nobles liked the thought of making themselves sick aboard a barge that tipped with the waves of the Purple Harbor while they gorged themselves on food and wine.

The servants moved forward quickly to set platters before the Merling Queen, and to pour her wine glass. She didn’t seem to react to them; sometimes, she really did seem quite like a lady.

“My dear Merling queen,” one of the men said, leaning forward over his plate and smiling a dazzling smile in the lady’s direction, “We are all the better for seeing you amongst us.”

The Merling Queen reached for her wine glass and took a long sip, and then set it back down, licking her lips.

Every single man at the table stiffened a little, at the sight, and Merebeth had to fight the urge to roll her eyes.

Men.

Even if she wasn’t very old or experienced in the things that the Merling Queen understood, she supposed she understood that well enough.

The Merling Queen glanced up then, a small smirk playing at her lips. “You are…too kind,” she said, and then, “All of you.”

The men all looked terribly annoyed, then, by the fact that she had mentioned ‘all’ of them, rather than only one.

“The Sealord is most honored to have you amongst the guests of his pleasure guards,” another man said then, and the ladies of the table all looked rather more than a little annoyed, by then.

“Well, and where is the Sealord?” The Merling Queen asked then, and the men all seemed to fall silent. “One would think he would be ere by now. We all know how he enjoys these feasts aboard his own pleasure barges, and the…gratification of being a most gracious host.”

And then one moved to the empty seat beside her, the one that Merebeth had only just now realized was at the head of the table, and no doubt meant for the Sealord alone. “There has been some…salacious news within the city, my lady,” he said.

The Merling Queen raised an eyebrow, taking another sip of her wine. “Indeed?”

“I am surprised you have not heard of it yourself,” the man continued, smirking now.

Merebeth raised an eyebrow, a little surprised herself. After all, it was not quite common knowledge that the Merling Queen dealt in secrets as often as she dealt in matters of the heart.

If they could be called that, for how short they were.

The Merling Queen shrugged, looking wholly unconcerned. “I was acquiring myself a new little mermaid,” she said, and then nodded in Merebeth’s direction, and Merebeth’s face flushed as she noticed the gazes of at least half of the men who were sitting with the Merling Queen turn towards her.

She swallowed hard, attempting to make herself look attractive and maidenly at the same time to their gazes, and not entirely certain how she ought to accomplish that, all things considered.

But their gazes quickly turned away from her once more, as their attentions were for the Merling Queen, not for one of her maidenly mermaids.

Or rather, the mermaids of the Merling Queen were all rumored to be maidens, beautiful, innocent young things serving a mistress who would teach them how to be her, one day, but not yet.

One of the men started to speak again, then. “They say that the Lord Hand of Westeros is in Braavos,” he explained. “That he has, this very day, become a guest of the Sealord.”

Merebeth’s heart skipped a beat, and she swallowed hard, because it had been a little while since she had heard anything so definite about Westeros save for the plays that the mummers put on in the square.

She had been trying to avoid anything to do with Westeros, since arriving at the House of Black and White and learning that she must put aside everything having to do with her old life.

And for the most part, she had managed. But this…that the Hand of the King was here in Braavos, this was a disturbing reality, and it brought back every unpleasant thought about King’s Landing that she had been trying to avoid for so long.

Westeros. Someone was here from Westeros, and was here on behalf of the King.

But there were so many kings, and Merebeth’s fists clenched around the Merling Queen’s veil while she tried to remind herself that she needed to breathe.

After all, the Merling Queen had said that the Sealord was still on his way; no doubt that meant that the Hand of the King would be accompanying him, and the Kindly Man would not take it well, nor would the Many Faced God, if she messed this assignment up on the very first nights of it.

She swallowed.

Perhaps the Hand would belong to Stannis Baratheon, and she would not have to find herself on the verge of wanting to strangle him the entire night.

The thought of what had happened to her last time, however, when she had become Blind Beth, losing her vision for so long and forced to rely on the rest of her senses, was enough to remind her what was at stake for her, however.

She hoped this Hand belonged to Stannis Baratheon. She honestly couldn’t say, even now, what she might do if she found a Lannister standing before her again. The last she’d heard, the Hand of the King had been Tywin Lannister.

The Merling Queen leaned forward, and for all that she was known for spreading her legs for the lords and bankers of Braavos, she didn’t show much skin, Merebeth thought, and then felt something like guilt for the thought.

“And this…Hand,” the Merling Queen said, licking her lips again as she reached for her wine glass, “Does it have a name, or shall I merely have to imagine what the King’s Hand does for him?”

Laughter, all around.

There was a splash, from the other side of the pleasure barge, however, and Merebeth glanced over just in time to see the man who had been fetching the Merling Queen’s wine tip over the edge of the pleasure barge.

That inspired rather louder laughter.

“Well, I don’t think we shall be seeing that one again,” the Merling Queen said, when the laughter had died down a little more, and the men around her all laughed the harder for it. The women were tight lipped, but not as tight lipped as Cersei Lannister had ever been when her husband spoke of other women before her very ears.

Merebeth supposed that was the way of Braavos.

“Something you should know, child,” the Merling Queen said in a whisper, reaching out and touching Merebeth’s arm, dragging her close in a vice like grip that might have appeared gentle to an outside observer, but which Merebeth only barely remembered to flinch at. “A man is only as useful as the depth of his pockets. And if he won’t buy you wine, he isn’t worth that.”

Merebeth bit back a snort, nodding dutifully at the “advice.” It was the sort of thing one of the Merling Queen’s servants would want to learn, after all, the sort of thing that the Kindly Man had sent her here to learn, even if it was not the sort of thing that Arya Stark would have cared to learn.

She hummed, glancing out at the great boat they were sitting on, watching all of the people on it, as it had become No One’s habit to do, once upon a time, even if it should not be Merebeth’s. She was too young, too innocent, to think of everyone as an enemy.

It was the one thing that No One could not shake, no matter how many personalities she took on, it seemed.

And then Merebeth’s eyes caught sight of someone who made her breath stop in her throat, her eyes go very wide, for once putting aside the character that the Kindly Man wanted her to play in order to stare in shock.

Because he…she knew who he was, even if she only vaguely remembered this man, from a lifetime ago. She knew exactly who he was, and she couldn’t believe her eyes, to see him here in braavos, a world away from the rest of his horrible family, while she was also here, serving the Merling Queen.

What a terrible, shocking coincidence, and not many things shocked No One anymore, not after what they had done to Arya Stark’s father.

When she glanced back at the Merling Queen, it was to notice that the woman had followed her gaze; clearly, the Kindly Man was right, and she was not so good at hiding her emotions as she had thought.

She didn’t want to think of how obvious that made her, when the Kindly Man had said she should try to emulate the Waif a little more, in that regard, and the Waif seemed to give off far too many of her emotions, to No One.

The Merling Queen leaned close, banishing her lover to bring all of her young ladies around her, but the lover was still fawning over her from afar, as all of the unaccompanied (and some accompanied) lords on the ship seemed to be doing. She had that affect on them all, Merebeth knew.

It was something that she feared she would never learn, no matter how much time she spent in the Merling Queen’s presence.

Her ladies gathered close, and Meredith moved close with them, for she was the youngest and inexperienced of all of them, and she could ill afford not to pay attention to anything the woman told them.

Besides, the Merling Queen looked like she was sharing a delightful secret, and Merebeth, though she pretended not to, loved gossip. It was the one thing she had gotten into the most trouble with her stepmother for; eavesdropping.

“An honored guest of the Sealord,” the Merling Queen murmured to her girls, and Merebeth’s breath caught in her throat, and she stumbled a little, where she stood behind the Merling Queen's chair.

Because this was impossible, the sight before her, and yet, she was seeing it.

Well, perhaps not impossible, but No One still felt the horrible shock she had felt when she was still Arya Stark in hiding, standing in Casterly Rock and wondering at her misfortune, that she might be serving Tywin Lannister, after everything that he had done to her family, and he not even recognizing who she was.

And now, his son stood not five paces away from her, this man whom it was rumored had married and ravaged her sister after Joffrey had gotten bored with her, after Arya had left her behind in King’s Landing. Who had probably tortured and raped her, because he was a Lannister and a monster, and who had apparently then come to Braavos.

Lord Tyrion Lannister was standing on the pleasure barge beside the Sealord, smiling politely at everything that he said as they lounged together on the ship, looking distinctly uncomfortable but also good at hiding it, the way that Arya Stark had never been good at hiding her own emotions.

Beside him, the Sealord, a grotesquely overweight man without a beard, despite his old age, was nothing in comparison, not to her, though she knew that he should have been.

But she was Merebeth now, and she turned her face slightly away from the man, lest he turn and recognize who she had once been. It had been what felt like a lifetime since she had been Arya Stark, since that girl had ever been in Winterfell, but there was still a terrible, off chance that Tyrion Lannister might turn this way and recognize exactly who she was, and Meredith could not chance that. Could not chance the loss of her position as one of Merling Queen’s girls.

She clenched her fists at her sides, and tried to remember that she was No One.

No, wait. She was Merebeth, and she didn’t know Tyrion Lannister from his father, and shouldn’t at all be bothered by the sight of him on the Sealord’s pleasure barge, just now. After all, he had never done a plain, peasant girl like Merebeth any harm, nor done harm to any member of her family.

She had only her father left, after all, and he would not take Kindly to her embarrassing him by attacking a random stranger after all that he had done to get her an audience before the Merling Queen.

“He is the Hand of the King of the Seven Kingdoms,” the Merling Queen continued, her eyes alight with lust, though Merebeth knew that it was not for his person, but for his position, and the depth of his pockets. “Lord Tyrion Lannister. Tis a pity, that he brought his whore with him, rather than coming alone, or I might have had a chance with him, and all of you would have been the better for it.”

The girls all hummed sympathetically, but Merebeth did not join them. She was finding it rather difficult to breathe, which was a stupid, childish reaction, and one that she had thought she had gained control over long ago.

“I’m glad that you won’t be accompanying him,” she blurted out, before she could think about the consequences of what she was saying, and the Merling Queen turned razor sharp eyes on her. Merebeth coughed. “I have heard stories about him, his family. He is not kind.”

One of the girls raised her head at Merebeth and scolded primly, “You shouldn’t believe everything you see in those silly plays, Merebeth.”

Merebeth lowered her burning face, and thought that Arya Stark would never have allowed this slip of a girl to speak to her like that without responding.

The other mermaids turned to glare at her, clearly annoyed by her lack of grace, but Merebeth could not bring herself to look at them.

Could not bring herself to care about their scathing looks, and the no doubt harsh reports they would give the Merling Queen about her tonight. She doubted she would be allowed to sleep in the Merling Queen's chambers tonight, as the Mermaids did.

No doubt, the woman would relegate her to the hall, with nothing but a lukewarm blanket to keep her company through the night.

But Merebeth wasn't thinking about any of that. Couldn't think about any of that, not with her eyes locked on the shock of red hair sitting at the front of the theater, at the little impish man accompanying it.

No.

No, it couldn't be possible.

There was no reason for Sansa Stark’s horrid husband to be here in Bravos, sitting no more than twenty steps away from where Merebeth stood, even if the man and the girl herself had nothing t do with someone like Merebeth.

She was hallucinating, that had to be it. She was seeing what her mind's eye wanted her to see, and, like the blindness, this was some sort of trick by the Kindly Man.

The Merling Queen, however, shot Selene a look, even as her gaze then turned to the woman sitting beside Tyrion Lannister, a woman who was very much not his wife.

“Merebeth is right,” she said. “Some men are not worth the challenge their deep pockets suggest. You ought to be careful to learn that lesson before you are forced to.”

This time, it was Selene who ducked her head. “Yes, my lady,” she said, agreeably, before lifting her head and glowering at Merebeth.

Merebeth kept her head lowered to avoid grinning triumphantly at the other girl. But the grin didn’t last for long, because Arya Stark still lingered like a plague beneath her skin, and when she glanced up at Lord Tyrion Lannister again, laughing at something that the Sealord had said, his arm wrapped in that of the woman beside him (the one the Merling Queen had hinted to be his whore) she could barely see straight, for the red in her eyes.

Tyrion Lannister was not on Arya Stark’s list, she reminded herself. She had no reason to kill him, and yet even now her hand was reaching into the fabric of the beautiful gown that the Merling Queen had commissioned for her, the one that made her feel sometimes like Sansa, and she thought of how easily she might kill him, just now.

This man who had married her sister, raped her night after night. The Imp, one of the Lannisters.

Surely they were all one and the same, were they not?

She shut her eyes quickly, lest she avoid attacking him here and now, in front of so many people, because she had to let go of that old life. She had to truly become No One, and she could not let that happen if she was attacking Tyrion Lannister for sleights against a sister she had vowed to let go of, as well.

Still, her hand clenched around the knife. She thought of the day that she had pretended to be Cat, a girl who so enjoyed the plays of the mummers who frequented Braavos and the Free Cities, making their money off of entertaining those who threw their coins towards them.

She licked her lips. Even if he wasn’t on her list before, she thought that perhaps he ought to be, after seeing what he had done, even if she knew that those plays were merely farces put on to make Joffrey look good and encourage trade with Westeros.

She wondered what she might have done, in this moment, if Tyrion Lannister had been on her list. If Merebeth would have been restrained enough to sit back and do nothing, as No One ought to.

That had been her favorite and her least favorite performance, No One thought, and then reminded herself that she oughtn’t have a favorite at all.

Still, now that Tyrion Lannister was here, she could not stop thinking about it. Could not stop thinking about that first day, when she stood before the stage, watching the actors the way the Kindly Man had taught her, memorizing the way that they moved, the way they acted and spoke, that she might become one of them more easily.

And of course, she had been distracted from all of that, that first day, by the sight of a girl who might as well have been her sister, up on that stage.

They had been reenacting the Siege of King’s Landing, the one that Stannis Baratheon had failed, and the whole time, Cat, who shouldn’t have cared about such a far away occurrence at all, had to remind herself that they didn’t know the truth of events even if they knew the basics, that whatever they were playing out might be leagues away from what had actually happened, in truth.

Still, Cat could not tear her eyes away, ignoring the voice inside her head that sounded far too much like the Kindly Man, reminding her of why she was really there.

Because up on stage was a girl with fiery red hair, and Cat had seen other redheads, during her time in Braavos and even before that, for the soldiers in Casterly Rock seemed to prefer them amongst their unwilling whores, but Cat’s breath still caught in her throat, at the sight of the slip of a girl up on stage, crying as Joffrey set her aside at the end of the Siege, promising her to his dastardly Imp of an uncle, who had, according to the play, wanted her in his bed for some time, and sadly marrying the beautiful virgin queen, Margaery Tyrell, instead.

The Imp moved towards her sister, grabbing her by the arm and yanking her towards him, and the stupid girl didn’t move back, didn’t try to fight back as he pulled her closer, pulled her flush against him, laughing wickedly as he was presented with the symbol of the Hand of the King.

He licked his lips as he stared at the Sansa up on the stage, and Cat grimaced, looking away, reminding herself that this was most likely all faked.

She did not look away for very long; her eyes would not let her, or perhaps the girl she had once been would not let her. She had left Sansa behind in King’s Landing, that girl. She would not abandon her by looking away now.

The Sansa on the stage flinched back, her bared breasts presented to the ogling crowd and the leering dwarf standing beside her, ripping at her shirt.

Cat noticed only then that she was the only person in the crowd who might still be considered a child, and grimaced.

She didn’t glance away, however, disgust filling her despite knowing that those who came out of the House of Black and White should not concern themselves with such things.

Especially should not be so...personally offended by it. The girl on the stage was nothing to her, nor was the girl she depicted, not anymore.

The Imp buried his head in her breasts, and the crowd laughed a the look of horror on Sansa’s face, as if she had not suffered enough, as if this was not another form of suffering, for her.

But then the Imp was pretending to ride her, pulling up her skirts and shoving himself at her, and the crowd jeered at the half man, and Cat had to remind herself that this was only a play, that the girl on the stage was not her sister and was only playing a part.

A part based on real life. She was not sure if that was a reassurance, or somehow worse.

And then the Imp tore away from her, thrusting Sansa down onto the floor of the stage and moving to the other side of it, where a beautiful young woman with dark locks was making a makeshift bed. He grabbed her, even as she protested against him, saying that she was nothing more than her lady’s maid, but the Imp didn’t seem to care, as he pretended to fuck her, too.

This time, Cat did look away, her eyes locking with that of the actress on the stage pretending to be her sister, and her throat went suddenly very dry when they did lock eyes.

Did not stop watching as the Imp raped her, again and again, and again.

Gods, she looked very much like Sansa, this girl, for nothing more than a street production.

Cat couldn’t tear her eyes away from Sansa’s until the girl was dragged behind the curtains by the Imp, Joffrey stepping out again to declare that his uncle had been banished from King’s Landing to go and save them from the Tyrells, who had turned wicked at the loss of their beautiful, virginal daughter, and Cat lost interest in the play.

Today, there was another play, and the Merling Queen was to play the part of the beautiful Queen who had stolen Joffrey Baratheon’s heart from Sansa Stark, and it was yet another reason for Merebeth to find to hate the other woman, though the Kindly Man had warned her not to find such reasons.

Reasons did not matter, to the Many Faced God, not on behalf of those doing his justice.

Merebeth shuddered. Because the play that the mummers were performing on a raised dais of the pleasure barge just now was remarkably similar to the one that Cat had seen, though this one, at the very least, did not portray the more…sexual nature of that play, and Merebeth wondered if it was because they did not want to offend their honored guest, or if it was because they were in the presence of lords, rather than peasants.

Still, the play was rather offensive, Merebeth thought, in its context for, despite the fact that Tyrion Lannister was in the crowd, he was still the same power-hungry, grasping man Cat had seen at that play in the marketplace, grabbing at Sansa while the King and Queen celebrated their marriage at Sansa’s expense.

And even if Joffrey had been horrible, that didn’t mean Merebeth felt relieved, to see an innocent girl married to another Lannister.

She sometimes wondered if they were all the same, after the time she had spent at Harrenhall with Tywin Lannister.

Tyrion Lannister looked pale, where he sat at the table, and Merebeth did not fail to notice the way that the Sealord gestured for them to skip through some of the more…inventive parts of the play, the parts that would no doubt make him look just as bad as he had been in that play Cat had witnessed in the square.

Perhaps some things, the play writes got right, and that worried her, to wonder what other sorts of things they might have also gotten right.

Merebeth tried to remind herself that she shouldn’t care, that she was nothing more than a commoner’s daughter and that world was a life away from any she would ever know. Her greatest experience would be able to emulate the Merling Queen, someday, maybe.

Still, her nails were digging so hard into her palms that she barely noticed when they started to bleed, until Selene glanced over at her and gasped a little.

The Merling Queen was on stage, playing the Queen Margaery, and so she was not there to reprimand Merebeth now, but Selene slapped her hand, all the same.

Merebeth flexed her fingers, grimacing, and didn’t take the handkerchief that one of the other mermaids offered her.

Today, the performance of the mummers was not much different from the one Cat had seen then, and Merebeth wondered what the Sealord thought it might accomplish, to embarrass such an honored guest, if he truly was so honored by the man. Perhaps it was a reminder that this was Braavos, and not King’s Landing, and the Sealord would not be seen to bow before a Westerosi noble if he did not wish to.

But another part of her, the part she’d tried so hard to bury, thrilled at the sight of any Lannister reminded that they did not shit gold.

And then the play was over with, and Tyrion Lannister looked rather shaky. No, Merebeth thought, feeling a sort of clamminess rush over her that she did her best to try and hide, it was not shakiness, but guilt.

She closed her eyes, and breathed out slowly through her nose, ignoring Selene’s scoff in her direction about a “little blood not hurting anyone, not even a little peasant bitch like you,” and did not open her eyes again until the Merling Queen returned to her mermaids, amidst light applause from the nobles around her on her part playing the Queen.

“Well,” Merebeth heard the Merling Queen say, as she opened her eyes once more, “I do, after all, having experience being a queen.”

The nobles found that hilarious. Merebeth wondered if they would have found it as funny coming from some girl in a tavern claiming to be their queen.

But, in many ways, that was exactly what the Merling Queen was; the queen of all of these men who sat around her, begging favors, looking at her so adoringly when they had wives and children at home, as if they could not stand the thought of being more than a few paces away from her.

As if her cunt itself was a crown.

The Merling Queen eyed her for a moment then, and then sighed. ”Come,” she said, holding out a hand to her. She looked almost sad, and for a moment, Merebeth wondered how much of her other life had shown on her face. “We’re leaving, now. These men’s pockets are shallow, today.”

Merebeth sighed in relief.

Or perhaps, that was Arya Stark, as she let go of the knife inside of her pocket, meant for use on the woman who had just saved her from making a horrible mistake and outing herself to a Lannister.

She was no longer quite so certain.


	2. Braavos, City of One Hundred Isles

When he was a child, Tyrion used to imagine that his uncle would come back and take him to Braavos this time, on one of his many trips around the world, adventurer that Gerion Lannister had been.

He used to pour over maps of the wealthiest of the Free Cities, imagining the places that they would go when Gerion finally came for him, the great city that sat atop a lagoon, surrounded by trees that kept the worst of the tempests out, where other cities had fallen into the sea, where the Drowned City had once done so.

Imagining all of the things that he would be able to do somewhere that no one knew he was a Lannister, going to the dozens of different harbors within that one city alone and buying whatever he liked with money that didn’t stink of Lannister shit, and see every temple to every god under the sun.

Somewhere he would be free to walk about the city, see the Drowned Town that had once been what Braavos was now, look upon the eel fights or the Titan of Braavos, without fear of them hating him for his name or for the fact that he had killed his mother.

Somehow, Braavos had become the one place that Tyrion had always wanted to go, when he was a child, above King’s Landing where his brother would be but his father and sister would be also, above Dorne, where Gerion said it was far too hot, above the Vale, where they said mists covered the eyes of men.

But Gerion, for all his stories about the world outside of the Rock, had never come to take Tyrion with him, this time.

Eventually, he had never come back at all.

It had always been to tell him another story, about how wonderful his most recent adventures had been, about all sorts of things like dragon glass and mermaids and princesses that Tyrion would have so loved to see himself, but had to content himself with hearing about from his uncle, or reading about in books.

So he poured over books as well, read everything he could about the history of Braavos, about Old Valyria and the Doom, about life when dragons had once walked the earth, and it had made everything he read seem a bit more fanciful, to read of dragons.

Had made him feel better about the fact that his father would never have let him go out of Westeros, where he could stain the Lannister name even to those who did not know it.

But his father was dead now, and as Tyrion stared up at the Titan of Braavos’s statue, looming above them, and it roared their ship’s arrival, he felt a shudder run through him, for all that the city was already, he could tell, intolerably hot.

Pod, standing on the prow of the ship beside him, jumped a little, and Bronn let out a loud laugh at the boy’s discomfiture.

They said the Titan could wake the entire city, at night, and Tyrion believed it, as he reached up and rubbed idly at his ears.

“You don’t have to be afraid, boy,” Bronn said, chucking Pod over the head as the boy flinched good-naturedly away from him. “The whores here are just like the whores in King’s Landing, and I’m sure they’ll love you all the same.”

He sighed a little, as he said it. Tyrion couldn’t blame him; he too, was a little jealous of the boy’s natural talent, with the girls of King’s Landing.

More than a natural talent, if they were letting him have it for free.

He glanced over at Shae, where she stood beside him, and hid a smirk, because he had a feeling that she wouldn't appreciate it and, after all, she was already angry with him. He did not want to do anything to antagonize her further, not just now.

He knew when to pick his battles, after all. That was why they were here in the first place.

The merchant who had brought them here from Oldtown cleared his throat behind them, at that moment, and Tyrion turned around.

It had been a time of it, convincing the older man, who really shouldn’t still be at sea so regularly, to let them bring Shae along in the first place. The man had seemed convinced that to have a woman aboard would bring them nothing but ill fortune, and in truth, Shae had been sick the entire journey there, so Tyrion could not even blame him for that.

A part of him had even been absurdly relieved that Shae was sick for most of the journey, because it meant that he did not have to wake from nightmares about his little wife, left behind in Highgarden, to face Shae’s disapproving scowls.

“This is where you get off, actually,” he told them, and Tyrion raised a brow, turning back to the harbor that was coming into sight. “It’s Ragman’s Harbor,” the sea merchant explained. “Only Braavosi are allowed into the harbor I’m traveling to, so you’ll have to get off here.”

Tyrion sighed, reaching into his pockets and pulling out several gold coins. “How much do I owe you?” He asked the man, fully prepared to haggle with him until they reached the harbor, and pleasantly surprised when the sea merchant named a decent price. His eyes narrowed. “Surely you can’t be serious.”

This was the first day Shae had been upright, and he knew the sound of her wrenching throughout the ship, something she insisted she had never done aboard a ship in the past, had put Tyrion off his meals several times, not to mention all of the other sailors.

The sea merchant waved a hand. “Nonsense,” he said, as they neared one of the rusty looking docks of the harbor. Ragman’s harbor, the merchant had called it. Tyrion supposed it was an apt name. “You were quite polite guests. I hope that you enjoy your stay here.”

Shae harrumphed loudly in a way that implied exactly what she thought of that without her having to open her mouth, and Tyrion bit back a sigh.

“Well, thank you again,” he said, reaching down to pick up some of their meager belongings, only for Shae to grab up her own clothes before he could.

Bronn shrugged, when Tyrion glanced over at him, and started walking after the woman without another word, only coming to a pause at the end of the docks where a dock master did end up haggling with them on a fair price for entering the city.

For all that a part of him had always dreamed of coming here, Braavos seemed intolerably hot to Tyrion, as he trudged through the busy streets of the Braavosi marketplace alongside his companions, trying not to think of how many times he’d been bitten by mosquitos since they’d landed at the harbor.

Braavos, for all its beauty, was really just a large piece of marshland jutting out of the sea, a city suspended over a swamp, and it stank of mud and fish, rather than shit and rats, like King’s Landing.

It did not help that every single building, made of stone on stone ground, was shoved so closely together, pushing bodies together that had no business being so close at all. But then, it was the same in King’s Landing, after all.

Tyrion wasn’t sure which was the improvement, of the two. It was funny; when he had first arrived there, Tyrion had enjoyed the heat of King’s Landing, the passions that it seemed to ignite in otherwise very ordinary people.

He didn’t remember his little wife being such a spitfire before she had come to King’s Landing, though he could admit the one very likely had little to do with the other. He knew why Sansa had become what she had, after all, all too well.

And he winced a little, even thinking of her now, after the way he had all but abandoned her without telling her in Highgarden with those tricky Tyrells.

Beside him as they walked, Pod let out a long sigh, adjusting his sword and reaching up to mop at his brow. They’d been walking for some time, because Tyrion wanted to find them lodgings before he went to find the Sealord and beg an audience with the man, but if the Sealord did eventually end up finding them instead, they would need to have found lodgings suitable for a Hand of the King and his entourage.

The ones they had passed so far all looked like shitholes, and Tyrion wanted to ask Shae, from the brief time that she had spent in Braavos as a child, whether they were all like this or whether they were simply in a worse part of the city, but he didn’t quite dare.

He wasn’t certain he wanted to chance bringing up her father when he had already gotten her angry by leaving Sansa behind in Highgarden.

"I've always wanted to go to Braavos," Tyrion said suddenly, and Shae glanced sideways at him, lip quirked up in idle amusement, the first time she had bothered to give him her whole attention since they had left the harbor in Oldtown.

And of course, he knew why she was angry; hells, he even thought she was justified in that anger, even if he was annoyed that not only would she not look at him, but she wouldn’t share his bed during the short nights they’d spent together on the ship to get here.

But he understood why she was angry; every part of Tyrion hadn’t wanted to leave Sansa alone there, amongst those grasping Tyrells, whom he’d damn well known didn’t have her best interests at heart, even if he knew that they weren’t going to hurt her.

Not the way Joffrey had, or would, had Tyrion not insisted that they needed to leave King’s Landing when they did, his little wife no longer seeming so concerned about being unnoticed by him, as she had always been in the past.

And a part of Tyrion had been afraid that it was because she was planning on doing something a little more drastic than just sending information to Stannis Baratheon, a thousand leagues away where he no doubt would not act on it any time soon, in any case.

He hadn’t wanted to leave her there, and he’d thought Shae understood that, after their last conversation, but apparently he hadn’t gotten his point across as well as he’d thought. Of course, it was rather difficult to help her understand the situation when he could not even tell her all of it, and that most of it was conjecture, in any case.

That he had a very clear feeling that Olenna Tyrell was about to attack King’s Landing, and that he’d just abandoned the rest of his godsbedamned family there to form an unholy alliance with her, so long as she saved the members of his family that he gave a fuck about.

And that she’d only told him all of that so that she could keep the Key to the North, now that she no longer had a granddaughter to plot over.

He winced a little, at the thought. It was strange, how much he’d managed to avoid feeling sympathy for a woman as merciless as Olenna Tyrell, the whole time he’d been within her home, but now that they were not, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

About how she must have felt, to so readily plan to declare war against the Lannisters after her granddaughter’s death, and, funnily enough, it only made him afraid of the thought of what Cersei might do, if she did somehow outlive her little beast of a son.

He grimaced; he wouldn’t have left Sansa there if he didn’t think that she would be safe, even with Olenna getting this war that she wanted, and he knew, besides, that she would be happy there.

She’d seemed happy enough, for the short amount of time that they had spent there.

And, after all, she’d seemed happy enough to be anywhere with someone who wasn’t Joffrey, after she’d sent that damned, treasonous letter to Stannis and nearly gotten herself killed, had anyone but Tyrion been the one to discover that letter.

"Really?" she asked, because she knew he was trying to lead her into a conversation. She could feel Shae's concerned eyes on her, but she didn't dare to look in the other woman's direction.

Tyrion shrugged. "My uncle Gerion often traveled the whole of the world, when I was younger. Or at least, that's how it always seemed to me. Braavos was one of his favorite places to travel, and he would bring me baubles." A shrug. "I suppose, as a little boy, that is what interested me the most.”

Shae raised an eyebrow, but didn’t bother to respond, the way she might have in the past. She knew, from the vast amount of time that she’d spent with Tyrion, how much he’d cared for his favorite uncle, and usually she had half a dozen questions about the many places Gerion had often regaled Tyrion with tales of, as a child.

But she didn’t ask for a single one of them, today.

Pod, walking along behind them as they made their way through the bustling marketplace of Braavos after leaving the Purple Harbor, spoke up, then, instead.

“Why didn’t you?” He asked, and Tyrion glanced back at the boy, where he, alongside Bronn, was walking behind them.

Tyrion shrugged. “I suppose I never got the chance,” he said, because it was better than admitting, even to Pod, that he’d spent most of his childhood and young adulthood locked away in the Rock, not allowed out because the rumors of what he was had been bad enough, as far as his father had been concerned.

It was not as if the rest of the world also needed to see the rumored dwarf of the Rock, even if he would have wanted more to travel outside of Westeros than within it.

But Braavos…even if he was here for a rather pressing issue, Tyrion found himself wanting to stop and enjoy the view. Somehow, it was more spectacular to be in this marketplace than it was to be in King’s Landing, though he supposed a part of that was the fact that Braavos did not stink of shit, the way that King’s Landing did.

“But what about this place do you like so much?” Pod asked, glancing around a bit skeptically, and gently shoving away a young woman who came forward in an attempt to sell her wares to him.

Tyrion smirked, slightly. “Well, for starters, they are supposedly the richest city in all of the Free Cities, and perhaps even in the world,” he pointed out. “And besides that, they have quite…interesting ways of doing things.”

This he said while they passed a group of courtesans, and Shae rolled her eyes at him, crossing her arms over her chest.

Tyrion grimaced; his pretense of flirting might have made her smile, once, and that was also how he knew her to be angry. Shae had always been the jealous type, but only when she knew she had something to truly lose.

Like when he had first married Sansa.

He grimaced again, as he wondered if he had lost both of them, by leaving Sansa behind in Highgarden.

Bronn snorted slightly, letting his eyes linger on the courtesans as they passed long after Tyrion had forgotten their existence.

“And then there is the government here,” Tyrion went on, warming to his topic as Pod moved a bit closer to hear him. “They do not have a king, but a Sealord, who controls the city as best as he might. And he’s elected, but for life. His child will not succeed him, but someone else.”

Pod didn’t really seem to understand why that so interested Tyrion, but the boy didn’t ask, either.

Shae let out a long sigh, as if she was bored already of Tyrion’s lecture, but he didn’t dare stop and let the oppressive silence that had been plaguing them ever since they got aboard that ship in Oldtown settle over them once again.

“The current Sealord is Ferrego Antaryon,” Tyrion explained to Pod. “He was elected by the magistrates of Braavos, and by that, of course, I mean the lords of the Iron Bank. But they say that he is very sick.”

Pod swallowed. “And he’s the one that we’re going to meet?” He asked, still looking a bit bemused by the whole thing.

Tyrion supposed it was because of the idea of electing someone into an office, rather than them simply being born into it.

Tyrion hummed. “As I said, he was all but elected by the Iron Bank. It means that he’s beholden to them; there’ve been quite a few Sealords who dared act against them in the past, and found themselves…removed from office, so to speak.”

“But I thought you said they were in office for life,” Pod began, and then blushed as it seemed to occur to him, what Tyrion had meant by that. Bronn, who had been doing a decent job of pretending that he wasn’t listening to the conversation so far in favor of eying up passing courtesans, snorted.

“You know, I did live very near here, once, so I am aware of how the politics of Braavos work. A bit better than Westeros, but the rich end up richer and the rest of us are only slightly poorer because of it,” Shae interrupted him then, dryly.

Tyrion cleared his throat, sending her a sheepish grin. “Yes, I suppose you would know more about it than I do,” he said, and Shae frowned, glancing away.

Tyrion winced. Ah, yes. They’d just had a rather protracted argument about which one of them knew best, for Sansa.

Bronn cleared his throat, loudly, to interrupt them, and Tyrion found himself uncertain whether to be relieved or annoyed that the other man was interrupting them.

Shae and he needed to have a conversation, one which did not devolve into a shouting match, soon, but it would be better if they didn’t have it in the middle of the busy streets of Braavos, he knew.

“They say this Sealord’s got enough animals for a menagerie, in this palace,” Bronn said, conversationally. A bit too lightly, Tyrion thought, wondering what the other man was doing. But it appeared, when Tyrion glanced back at him, that he was talking to Pod, rather than Shae. “All sorts of beasties from across the known world. Striped horses and tigers and shit like that.”

Pod, Tyrion noticed, for all his prowess in the bedroom, looked a little alarmed, at Bronn’s words. “Just roaming through the palace?” He asked, excitedly, and Bronn laughed.

“I imagine he keeps them all in one room,” Bronn said, and then, thoughtfully, “Though, I s’pose if his wife ever does stray…”

“Don’t get any ideas,” Tyrion said wearily, secretly pleased that Shae was laughing along with Bronn, at those words.

Bronn rolled his eyes. “Yes, m’lord,” he said mockingly, and Tyrion shot the other man an unamused glance, the last thing he wanted to have to break up some sort of duel between the Sealord of Braavos and his man.

Though, the Sealord would probably just order him killed, if it came to that, Tyrion realized.

“A reading,” a woman suddenly called out, eyes on Tyrion as she spoke, with a beautiful face but body wrapped up from head to toe otherwise in rich red silks, hand snatching out to grasp Shae’s. Shae jerked a little bit, but did not try to pull away from her. “For your lovely wife.”

Shae colored a little, but didn’t bother to correct the other woman, and Tyrion felt a stab of guilt, that this was the woman he truly loved but that she would never truly be his wife, even if she was in every way that mattered, these days.

It was not as if his little wife had much mourned the thought of being separated from him, once he’d decided to leave her in Highgarden. Or, at the very least, he much doubted that she had.

“Ah,” Tyrion said, looking the woman over and deciding that she had dyed those silks herself, rather than having bought them as such. “I think not.”

He reached out, pulling Shae’s hand out the woman’s, and the woman scoffed a little, looking hurt.

“But…I tell you, this first one will be free,” she offered, and Tyrion found himself grinding his teeth as the crowd pulsed around them, some of the people passing them looking annoyed that they were holding up half the street as Pod already moved to get out of their way, and Bronn merely looking amused again. “For the sake of the child.” She licked her lips. “Every mother ought to know something of the future of their child.”

The whole world seemed to go still, at those words.

Tyrion stumbled, where he had been about to walk on and leave the fortune teller to fend for herself with some other rich fool, and he nearly tripped and fell face first into the cobblestones, and would have done so, indeed, if Pod had not suddenly reached out to steady him.

His mouth was suddenly very dry.

Tyrion froze, the opulence of one of the wealthiest marketplaces in the world suddenly appearing sour, before his eyes, as even the air escaping his lips, at the fortune teller’s words, seemed to go still before him.

He glanced over at Shae, and saw that her eyes were equally as wide as his own felt. Bronn, behind them, swore rather foully, but Tyrion didn’t have the presence of mind to tell him off for it, his own mind rather echoing the sentiment.

“W…What did you just say?” He finally asked, recovering before Shae did, even as she reached a hand down to cover her stomach. He spun around to face the fortune teller instead of Shae in that moment, because he didn’t think he would be able to look at her at all without looking down at her stomach, even if this fortune teller was just lying to make a few coins.

She had to be. They had been so very careful.

No, they had been more than careful, because Tyrion knew well what it was for him to bring a child into the world, a world where his sister lived to torment him, a world where he himself had destroyed his own mother.

And still, he found his eyes trailing of their own accord to Shae’s stomach, as he saw the look in the fortune teller’s eyes, pretender or not.

She was still a woman, after all.

Shae’s very flat stomach, because surely Tyrion would have noticed, if she was pregnant, surely Shae would have, after all of the time that she had spent servicing men, would have known what signs to look out for.

But Shae had gone deathly pale, and was looking at the fortune teller like she didn’t quite know whether to believe her or not, and Tyrion’s heart skipped a beat.

For a moment, Shae swayed, and Tyrion had the terrifying thought that she might faint right there in the middle of the busy street, and he remembered what she had said about never reacting the way she had on this journey aboard a ship before, and having been on them often.

Fuck.

Fucking fucking fuck.

Bronn, standing behind them, choked on his next breath, and it was only then that the full force of what the fortune teller had just said truly sunk in, if it had not already.

Pregnant.

The fortune teller was saying that Shae was pregnant, somehow, and that feeling of coldness, despite the relative warmth of the Braavosi streets, rushed over him again.

The fortune teller was saying that Shae was pregnant, and Tyrion grimaced at the thought, because there was no way, there was really no way that she could possibly be-

They had spent far too many nights thinking that they were going to die, in King’s Landing, with the High Sparrow’s fanatics surrounding the Keep, with the Tyrells declaring war on the King.

They had been stupid. So fucking stupid, but they hadn’t done themselves the good service of dying, either.

Pregnant. Dear gods, Shae was pregnant.

Pregnant, and they had been stupid in King’s Landing, and Tyrion knew the exact night when they had slipped up, both of them deep into what remained of the wine in a place that was being cut off from it, thinking that it was very likely they might die the next morning.

He could have killed them, now.

By the look on Shae’s face, she had figured out that exact night, as well, and Tyrion’s stomach sank, because for a few moments, before she wore that look on her face, he might have turned back and laughed in the fortune teller’s face.

But with that look on Shae’s face, he knew that it was at least a possibility. That she was putting it together, as Tyrion had.

Fuck.

"Lord Hand," a man’s voice interrupted Tyrion’s rather frantic confusion, and Tyrion paused, turning around and blinking at the man, his thoughts still entirely scattered, and he didn’t dare to meet Shae’s gaze because he knew that the moment he did, he wouldn’t be able to focus on the rather thin, wiry man standing before them, dressed in simple but fine leathers and dark blue silk around his collar, and eying Tyrion up and down like he knew exactly who he was.

But then again, he’d used Tyrion’s official title, hadn’t he, so long as he still had it, so of course he knew who Tyrion was.

He didn’t look much like a banker, though.

No, and if Tyrion were more aware, he would see the rigid lines of the man’s body and know that this man had never done anything but fighting, in his entire life.

"I'm sorry,” Tyrion said, shaking his head as he struggled to regain his footing, as the fortune teller melted away into the crowd and Shae still looked far too pale.

He thought he was going to be sick. He really didn’t have the constitution to deal with an emissary from the Sealord, at the moment.

From the look of shock on Pod’s face, he thought the younger boy was going to be sick as well, though what he had to be sick about, Tyrion couldn’t say. It wasn’t as if he had just learned that his lover was pregnant, and likely to have just as difficult of a time with such a pregnancy as Tyrion’s own mother had had…

"Do I know you?” Tyrion asked finally, into the silence. Well, relative silence; the marketplace was still bustling around them, Tyrion becoming slowly more aware of what was going on around him once again.

The man smiled thinly. "I am an associate of the Sealord," he said. "He extends a humble invitation to you and your...companions, to stay in the Sealord's Palace."

Tyrion blinked. "And you're his...associate," he said, nodding to the man's breastplate and the sword at his side.

The man smiled thinly, a shark’s smile that somehow encompassed their entire group. "I am Qarro Volentin, the First Sword of Braavos, my lord, but I thought perhaps to spare you any unpleasant worries.”

Tyrion raised an eyebrow, for the man didn’t look like much of a threat to anyone, for being the chosen protector of the Sealord of Braavos, which meant that there was something about him that Tyrion could not see from the surface, to have been chosen by the Sealord for such a position. But then again, he knew damn well how deceiving looks could be.

Tyrion ground his teeth. "My wife and I are not here on official business," he told the man, deciding that referring to Shae as his wife would be…easier, all around. He did intend to sleep with her again at some point during this trip, after all. ”Though I suppose that does not matter to the Sealord."

The First Sword smiled, eyes flitting knowingly over to Shae, but he didn’t call Tyrion out on the matter. "They said the new Hand of the King in Westeros was a very intelligent man," he said. “Come.”

“We have already found lodgings…” Tyrion began, gesturing back towards the rest of his group, and the First Sword let out a little sigh.

"Nothing will happen to harm your companions once they are under my lord’s protection, my lord," the First Sword assured him. "The Sealord is interested only in extending the hand of hospitality to such honored guests."

"And making sure I meet with the Iron Bank, no doubt," Tyrion muttered under his breath.

The First Sword smiled thinly, looking more amused than annoyed at Tyrion’s presumption. "And that, my lord.”

Tyrion sighed; since he wanted to meet with the Iron Bank in any case, he supposed this would be the easiest way of getting the meeting done quickly.

It was strange, how desperate he was to see this done quickly, while having absolutely no motivation to speak with any representative of one of the most powerful institutions in the world, and one whom, once they gave him their answer to his rather insane proposition, would stand by that answer regardless of any argument he might try to make, he knew.

But the First Sword, this Qarro fellow, did not take no for an answer, and Shae still looked drained from…whatever that had been, that they had just faced moments before. Tyrion thought it would be unkind to force her to remain on her feet, now.

“Very well,” Tyrion said tiredly, “Do lead the way.”

* * *

They made their way through the rest of the marketplace far more quickly, after that, the people happy to move out of the way for the First Sword of Braavos and his companions, and then up the hill to where the Sealord’s palace stood, large and imposing upon the rest of the city, for all that it was more beautiful than it was intimidating.

The First Sword talked loudly the whole way, about the different attractions of Braavos, about whether or not their journey here had gone well, somehow without ever managing to ask them a single question.

Bronn seemed amused by him, at the very least, but Tyrion suspected that was rather more because he was interested in the scimitar hanging off of Qarro’s belt.

Tyrion found the man nauseating, unable to think for his chattering, and he suddenly had much to think about, after all.

Pod sucked in a breath, as they came into view of the great palace that stood looming over half of the city, adorned with a giant, purple snail that looked frankly ridiculous on the structure, staring at it like it was something to be in awe of, when it was hardly as tall as the Keep.

If, that was, the Keep was even still standing, at this point, which Tyrion supposed he had no guarantee of.

The thought sat like a weight in his chest, pulling him down and driving him forward at the same time, and he hurried his steps a bit faster, trying not to think about that fortune teller’s little revelation at all, because right now, he had enough to worry about.

His brother, his niece and nephew, the one that wasn’t horrible, were all stuck inside that Keep, and he was here to ensure that it did remain standing around them, if no one else.

And then they were within the great hall of the palace, where the Sealord had already clearly been made aware of their impending arrival, for he stood there, clothed in fine silks, alongside a rather large retinue of nobles, grinning at the sight of Tyrion.

Tyrion shifted uncomfortably, unused to such a greeting from anyone who knew of him but did not know him well.

Even as the Hand of the King, it was not as if he was well respected even in King’s Landing.

“Ah, Lord Hand,” The Sealord said, giving him a little grin that might very well have been a grimace, from anyone else. He stepped forward, rather excitedly pumping Tyrion’s hand. Strangely, Tyrion thought it was genuine. “Welcome to my…” he glanced around, smirking again. “Humble abode.”

Tyrion thought he heard Bronn snort, behind them.

The Sealord was an older man, with greying hair and a bulging belly, and far too many laugh lines for someone who held such a position of authority. His wife, beside him, was at least a dozen years younger, and harder for it.

Unlike her husband, she did not bother to pretend to be happy to see Tyrion, something he had grown to expect from the women in his life, of late, and so he didn’t bother to take offense at it. Instead, he merely smiled at her before turning the rest of his attention on the Sealord, as the First Sword took up ranks behind the unequal couple in silence.

“My thanks, for your hospitality, in bringing us here,” Tyrion said, forcing himself to recover enough not to offend the man. After all, as he had just got done explaining to Pod, he was going to need the Sealord’s goodwill, if he was going to get what he had come here for, from the Iron Bank.

The Sealord certainly did not control the Iron Bank, rather the other way around, but Tyrion couldn’t afford to take any more chances, given all of the ones he was already taking in coming here.

“My lovely wife,” Ferrego introduced the woman standing beside him then, beckoning for the woman to come forward. She gave a sniff, and then stepped forward, daintily extending her hand, and snatching it back before Tyrion could do more than touch his own fingers to it gently, looking somewhat disgusted.

He grimaced; it appeared that even here, dwarves were not well liked, though he supposed he should have expected as much.

Once the greetings were done, Tyrion breathed a sigh of relief, hoping that he might be offered rooms to retire in for the night so that he could get rid of the headache pressing at his temples, and sit down with Shae.

He had a feeling that they had rather a lot to talk about, at the moment.

“If you’ll forgive us,” Ferrego said then, and Tyrion’s stomach sank, “My wife and I were just about to sit down for the evening meal on our pleasure barge. If you’d be so kind as to join us, we would be honored to have you at our table.”

His lady wife harrumphed, at those words, but didn’t object more than that, and as Tyrion was not the sort of man to back down just because someone did not like him, and as he was a guest of the Sealord and not his wife, he agreed.

“We would be most grateful to you,” Tyrion admitted, glancing at his companions, all of whom seemed to shrug at the same time. He inwardly rolled his eyes.

The Sealord flapped a hand through the air. “Nonsense,” he said, already beginning to walk in that direction. “It is our honor, to have the Hand of the King of Westeros at our table.”

Tyrion’s brows knitted together. “Actually, it’s King of the Seven…”

But the Sealord was already on to his next topic. He talked rather quickly, for a diplomat. One would think he would not want to be caught saying too much, to have remained in his position for so long.

Sealords served for life, but he seemed rather old for that position, when so many rumors pointed to so many of his predecessors outliving their usefulness to the Iron Bank and simply…dying of ordinary circumstances, a successor already found.

Whether he talked too much or not, clearly this man was not one to be underestimated.

“Unfortunately, we were already planning to have our dinner aboard one of my pleasure barges,” the Sealord said. “I’m afraid after so long at sea, you might not want to get aboard another boat, but if you do, it is…quite a spectacle.” He turned to Shae, as he said his next words. “I think that you will like it, and your lady companion.”

She eyed him warily, before her eyes flitted over to Tyrion, waiting for his response.

Tyrion had called her his wife, to the First Sword, and had not bothered yet to introduce her to the Sealord, but the man seemed already to know who she was, if the way that his eyes raked over her form in a way that would have been entirely inappropriate if she were Tyrion’s wife was any indication.

Or perhaps these Braavosi were simply far more forward than they were in King’s Landing.

Tyrion rather liked the thought.

It distracted him from glancing at Shae himself, where he knew his eyes would inevitably find her stomach again.

He could already feel a migraine coming on, at the reminder, and wished he could have found some way to beg off the invitation without appearing rude.

Tyrion cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said. “If it wouldn’t be much trouble, of course.”

The Sealord waved a dismissive hand, at that. “Of course not, of course not. We are always happy to hear the tales of travelers, and especially those who have come so far. Aren’t we, my lady?” He asked of his wife.

The wife grunted, in response. Tyrion rather got the feeling that was a ‘no,’ and almost snorted, himself.

But then the Sealord was all but leading them out of the palace and out to the Purple Harbor beyond the marshlands surrounding the palace, before Tyrion could come up with a good excuse to beg off.

Besides, Pod looked rather excited at the prospect of food, he supposed, even if he was not.

"Your lady," the Sealord mused, his eyes narrowed as he turned to contemplate Tyrion while they walked down to the harbor and, no doubt, to this waiting pleasure barge, his wife and Shae walking some distance ahead of them, chatting quietly for all that the Sealord’s wife had seemed quite content not to say two words to Tyrion. "She is Braavosi?"

Tyrion grimaced, eyes flitting almost unconsciously over to where Shae was talking in hushed tones with the Sealord’s wife, whose name, Tyrion only now realized, Ferrego had not bothered to give him.

"Did my sister happen to tell you I was coming?" Tyrion asked idly, eyes narrowed at the older man.

The Sealord smiled, his amused eyes revealing nothing at all. “Why ever would you think that, my lord?"

Tyrion eyed the man. “She is from Lorath," he admitted, finally, finding himself suddenly a bit overdressed, as they reached the harbor and servants were suddenly surrounded them, herding them to a waiting dock and half a dozen waiting nobles, as well.

"Hmm," the Sealord said slowly, eyes still lingering rather too long on Shae. “Your lady companion? I thought she looked more familiar than a Braavosi might. More beautiful than a Westerosi as well, if you will pardon my saying so.”

Tyrion gritted his teeth. “Did you?” He asked, not wanting to garner Shae anymore attention than her natural beauty, at least in his eyes, might demand.

“She’s beautiful,” The Sealord went on, eying Shae with obvious interest. “I see why you prefer her to your frigid Northern wife, if the stories are true.”

Now, Tyrion was gritting his teeth so hard he thought he might crack one of them, because the last thing he wanted to talk about right now was his wife. He was saved from having to respond too soon and ruin the small amount of camaraderie between them by actually getting onto the rather larger than he’d expected pleasure barge, which was already bustling with servants preparing the food and music, it seemed.

Moments later, the pleasure barge was leaving the docks, moving a little bit out into the harbor before one of the sailors laid anchor, and the servants announced that it was time to eat.

It was strange, Tyrion thought, to want to eat aboard a pleasure boat, even one as large as this one, where eating did not present too much of a challenge and there were so many people there as well, or at the very least, he found it so, as the Sealord’s retinue seemed not to, all of them either finding seats along the large table that had been set up on the boat which wasn’t moving from the Purple Harbor, or milling about talking to one another.

Tyrion wondered how many of them were talking about him, from the way they all kept looking his way.

Bronn stood behind him, looking rather more at ease than Tyrion felt comfortable with him being, even if so far, the Sealord truly had been nothing but hospitable. He’d been drawn up into some sort of conversation about the best types of swords with Qarro, the two of them chatting amiably, and Pod looking a bit bored.

Shae found her seat beside Tyrion, not looking at him at all.

“A beautiful feast,” the Sealord informed his servants, and then clapped his hands, signaling for his many guests to begin eating. Tyrion wondered if there were so many of them on account of him, or if this truly had already been planned.

He glanced down at the heaped up food before him, licking his lips slightly. It did look to be a wonderful feast, and after all of the time they’d spent aboard the ship to get here, eating nothing but rationed foods, he found he was rather hungry for something with a bit more taste.

As he began to eat, he tried to field the Sealord’s questions as best he was able; it was difficult, for the man seemed terribly inquisitive about King’s Landing, and Tyrion didn’t know if that was true curiosity or if he was fishing for information. And, even if he was not fishing, the dozen or so nobles aboard the ship were all clearly listening to Tyrion’s every response.

And, besides that, the Sealord seemed to have no trouble eating with his mouth full, despite his wife’s repeated, disgusted admonishments.

But it was not long before a group of mummers appeared from below deck, all of them taking bows before their audience, who clapped rather rigorously for them, one of them stepping forward from the little raised platform that they had all taken their bow on, and would no doubt be performing on, to announce the name of the play.

It was not one that Tyrion was familiar with, but then, he supposed, this was Braavos, and he doubted their plays were similar.

“Ah, I love this play,” The Sealord’s wife said, loudly, as she took her seat again, before turning and asking Shae, in a stage whisper that the whole of the barge heard that night, “Tell me, is your lover’s wife really as gentle and compassionate as she seems, here? She must be, to put up with you.”

Shae went very still, at the other woman’s words, and then turned towards Tyrion, her face white. She didn’t respond, however, merely plucking the wine glass out of Tyrion’s hand and downing the rest of it herself.

Well, Tyrion thought, with a mental sigh, it appeared that the charade was over. If she wasn’t going to pretend that Shae was his wife, when the whole of Braavos must have known otherwise by this point, considering how much of a spectacle his marriage had become, he doubted that the rest of them would, either.

However, the Sealord almost looked embarrassed, by his wife’s outburst to Shae, turning to Shae himself to ask, “Would you like some more wine, my lady?”

Shae bit her lip, and for a moment, Tyrion thought she was going to inform him that she was hardly a lady, but she didn’t. Instead, she merely shrugged, and the Sealord beckoned one of the servants to come forward and serve her.

The servant did so, but he must have been rather loyal to the Sealord’s wife, with the way he kept his upper lip upturned the whole time he did so.

Shae didn’t appear to notice, rather too intrigued by her wine glass. Or rather, Tyrion’s wine glass, it would appear.

And then a hush came over the dining table, as the little pavilion before them lightened, and the rest of the room darkened. Tyrion was almost intrigued enough to ask how the Sealord had managed that, but by then, the performance had already begun.

And Tyrion found something horrifying being played out before him, but also familiar, in some ways: the day after the Battle of Blackwater, it seemed, was a rather entertaining event, for the people of Braavos.

He swallowed hard, glancing over at the Sealord before asking, “Are all your plays so interested in Westerosi politics?” He asked, quietly, not really wanting to think about them, at the moment, considering why he was here. Things were going to change rather greatly about them, after all, once he was done here. “I would hope you did not force such a performance, on my account.”

The Sealord grimaced. “Actually, the performance was already chosen, my lord,” he said, looking almost…apologetic, and Tyrion’s gut churned unpleasantly, at the look. He suddenly had a rather bad idea about where the direction of this play might be going.

After all, it would not do to make the King of Westeros look bad, when Braavos found them to be trade partners, and the Sealord’s wife had just admitted how much she liked this play, after all of her coldness to Tyrion.

Up on the stage, a girl with hair as red as Sansa’s burst into rather believable tears, falling to her knees and hugging herself as she did so.

“Oh, what shall I do, married to the Imp, rather than to my beloved?” She begged the sky, glancing upwards.

Behind him, Tyrion heard Bronn snort, and he turned around, fixing the other man with a glare that Bronn seemed pointedly not to notice.

But the man playing Joffrey (rather too old, in Tyrion’s opinion) moved forward then, kneeling down before Sansa and taking her hands into his. She lifted her head, blinking back far too believable tears.

“I shall always care for you, in my heart of hearts, gentle lady. And you shall always have a place here, despite your family’s treason,” he told her, voice booming out across the pleasure barge. “But I am afraid that I cannot afford to follow my heart, as a King. I must do what my duty commands of me.”

With that, he turned away from her, and Sansa wiped at her eyes and murmured, “And I shall always love you, O my king,” before scurrying off the stage.

Fucking hells.

Tyrion had come here without Sansa to get away from the girl, but he was haunted by her screams and her tears in his dreams, and when he awoke, he was haunted by…whatever the fuck this was.

His own history, come to life, he supposed. Sansa’s own history, in some ways, though fabricated in far too many for Tyrion to be comfortable with the girl on the stage smiling at Joffrey so.

She was replaced, moments later, by a young woman who didn’t look like Margaery Tyrell at all, but whom Tyrion recognized to be her performer within moments.

Perhaps it was something about the way she was standing, or the look she was sending Joffrey’s way; in either case, he grimaced.

“My lady,” the mummer playing Joffrey (rather poorly, to Tyrion’s mind) said, taking Margaery’s hand, before glancing longingly back at Sansa. “I would be glad to take you for my wife, but I am promised to another.”

The Margaery on stage smiled at her husband, but she lacked the rather sultry, mischievous smirk Tyrion had grown used to seeing on Margaery Tyrell’s face, in doing so, the one that promised she could manipulate Joffrey in any way that she saw fit.

He grimaced a little; the girl was dead, no doubt by his sister’s own hand, if not literally than at least by the hand of someone she had hired to see Margaery Tyrell at the bottom of the sea, a fate that would at the very least ensure that she was very dead, and here he was, thinking of her in that way, even if it was rather true.

The girl had been a manipulative little shrew, of course, but she had also been more than a friend to Sansa, and even if that had all just been a pretense for her family’s plots, as well, Tyrion knew that Sansa mourned her dearly.

There had to be something there worthy of mourning, for Sansa to be so distraught.

But then again, he knew his brother would have mourned Cersei dearly, if anything happened to her; that did not necessarily make her a good person. The only thing redeemable about her was her love for her children, and even then, Tyrion was not certain if he would call that ‘good.’

Still, he didn’t think Margaery Tyrell had been quite as horrible of a creature as his sister had always strove to be, and so he supposed she had that going for her.

He sighed; the moment he’d learned, along with the rest of King’s Landing and a very distraught Joffrey, who might even have been more horrified than Sansa at the news, that Margaery had fallen to the bottom of the sea in a horrible storm alongside her brother Loras, he’d known that Cersei had to have had a hand in it.

For all her manipulations, Margaery had seemed rather blind to the fact that every step she took to become closer entrenched with her husband was only setting off a worse and worse reaction from Cersei.

Tyrion had known, from almost the moment she’d first smiled at his nephew, that Cersei was going to see her punished for it, and indeed, she had, because sending Cersei off to marry Willas, away from where she might be able to keep an eye on her son, had been a horrible mistake.

He could have easily told Margaery that.

But now, he wasn’t certain that he would have, looking back, if he’d known her to be better at this game than just a pretty face. Seeing the way she had manipulated both him and Sansa, in order to get Sansa to confess against Oberyn Martell…it had disturbed him, greatly, seeing how easily she had tricked even him into doing exactly as she’d wanted.

He hadn’t realized how good she was at playing everyone around her, rather than just her husband, until that moment, and it hadn’t made Tyrion inclined to help her since.

And that was the main reason he didn’t know how to comfort his little lady wife, when she mourned over Margaery’s death, because he couldn’t say with any certainty that Margaery Tyrell deserved her tears, that she loved Sansa at all, or would have cried for her, in turn.

That had been part of the reason he’d wanted to leave her in Highgarden, as well. All of Sansa’s most disturbing actions, of late, reaching out to Stannis Baratheon when the man had never given two shits about her with information that could destroy House Lannister, glaring openly at Joffrey, no doubt plotting his death in secret more obviously than the oblique hints she’d sent to Stannis…

He recognized them for what they were; grief. The girl was grieving for a woman whom, while he didn’t understand it, she must have loved, in some capacity, and he could not stand there in silence and comfort her with any of the right words when he thought she was actively seeking out her own death with her actions, any more than he had been able to comfort her when he’d been forced to bring her the news of her mother’s and brother’s deaths.

He swallowed hard at the thought; sometimes, he wondered to the gods if that girl was cursed, with all of the bad luck she seemed to encounter.

But he hoped, even if Olenna merely wanted the girl under her thumb, that at least amongst Margaery’s family, Sansa might be able to find a little more piece than she’d been able to in King’s Landing, since learning of Margaery’s death.

She deserved it, if nothing else.

But the Margaery on the stage was far more open with her emotions. “Your Grace does me great honor, in choosing me to be your lady wife,” she said.

The Joffrey on stage looked like a godsbedamned angel, Tyrion thought, with a snort, as he reached back for the wine glass he and Shae seemed to be sharing, taking another gulp of it while Shae shot him a knowing glance, but didn’t try to stop him.

"That one, playing the good Queen, may her soul rest in peace, is called the Merling Queen," the Sealord said, leaning into Tyrion's space to speak. "Beautiful, is she not?"

Tyrion hummed. She was, even he could see that with all of the veils and finery that she wore, finer even, he suspected, than many of the outfits his sister owned, but quite young, for his tastes.

Older than Sansa, but still, too young.

Her long, black hair was pulled into an elaborate braid, small pearls poking out of it, and wrapped in a sheer purple cloth that ran down her back, tied, he thought, to the sheer veil that she wore, as well, pulled back from her face as she performed.

But her dark, inquisitive eyes met his, in that moment, and Tyrion swallowed hard, seeing then, he thought the thing that so intrigued the men of Braavos, about this particularly famous courtesan.

Of course he’d heard of the Merling Queen; every young man in Westeros who dared to learn about Braavos had heard of the Merling Queen at least once, a courtesan deemed the most beautiful of the Free Cities, who had her way with whomever she pleased and lived in a mansion as opulent as the one the Sealord possessed, trained by the Merling Queen before her and training one to replace her the whole time that she appeared.

She warmed the beds of only nobleman, and it was considered something of an honor, to be with her. Tyrion had even heard the rumor that she was trained to warm the bed of every Sealord, on their first night after being chosen into that title.

Those eyes did not flinch away, when they met his, but rather seemed to search deep and know his every secret within a few moments, before they flitted away, and a small smile, neither mischievous nor sweet, touched her rouged lips.

Tyrion got the feeling that she knew he was still watching her, and rather enjoyed the sensation, as she went back to her part with something like relish, and also got the feeling that this was not something that the Merling Queen normally did, performing with mummers before the Sealord and his retinue, though she was taking to the performance almost too well.

She wore enough jewels around her throat, and plaited into her hair, that Tyrion wondered if she couldn’t possibly feel bogged down by them, in the same way that a King might from being forced to wear a solid gold crown all evening.

Then again, Joffrey had never seemed bothered by wearing his crown.

"And those girls?" he gestured to the young women holding her long, dark hair and veil behind her, though he supposed that ‘women’ might be a bit of a stretch. They seemed, rather, to be little more than girls, and the thought made him grimace; they all looked younger even than Sansa, he thought. By the annoyed look on Shae’s face, she thought the same.

"Other courtesans?"

The Sealord laughed. "Her Mermaids, she calls them. Never seen without them. All young…maidens, being readied for the future ahead of them. It is…quite an honor, to be chosen by the Merling Queen to attend her. These ladies will get the finest educations in all of Braavos, and be able to boast that they learned it all from her, even if they do not become courtesans.”

Tyrion grunted, taking another sip of wine and glancing toward where Shae sat beside him. He knew, of course, that in Braavos, their treatment of prostitutes was rather different from in Westeros. Here, they were treated almost as like ladies, if a bit finer, with educations as fine as a man’s and doted upon with showers of gifts from their admirers, for every nobleman wanted to have a chance with them.

But still, it was a strange thought, to realize just how admired they were here, when in King’s Landing they were little more than trash to have a few coins thrown at them at the end of the night.

He wondered how Shae might have turned out, if she had ended up here, under the tutelage of the Merling Queen, rather than in Westeros, in some enemy soldier’s camp.

He wondered if he would have been able to love her as much, knowing that every air she put on was a game as careful as the one Margaery had played with her own husband, never once loving him.

"Do you want her?" the Sealord asked abruptly, and Tyrion nearly choked on his drink, glancing at the other man. "She's yours. Just say the word. I am sure she would find you…particularly fascinating, if all of the stories about your prowess prove true.” He laughed, drunkenly, and Tyrion found himself flushing.

Tyrion's eyes narrowed; he was far too aware of Shae, sitting just beside him, even if the woman did seem drawn into a conversation with Pod at the moment, to wonder what the Sealord was up to, with such a question.

He wondered if this particular Sealord had partaken of the Merling Queen himself, and if so, what his rather judgmental wife had thought of it, at the time.

Or perhaps she only judged him now on the fact that he was Tyrion Lannister, the Imp, rather than that he had brought his mistress into her palace.

"You seem to be doing much to attempt to placate me," he said, desperate to change the subject, and not wanting to be tempted. He tried valiantly to avoid the Merling Queen’s eyes, for the rest of the night. "I don't suppose there is a reason for that?"

The Sealord's smile was cold. "Perhaps she does not run toward your tastes," he said idly, reaching for his fork. “She looks very little like your current companion, after all. There are other such beautiful women in Braavos. I could have them all in your bedchambers by tonight."

The sad truth was, four years ago, Tyrion might have taken him up on such an offer. Gladly would have, in fact, even if he'd been keeping Shae in his bed.

But now, he looked at this beautiful girl known as the Merling Queen and felt nothing but sick, seeing how young she was. How beautiful. His eyes slanted to the girls behind the Merling Queen, and he thought that beauty was a curse, on little girls. A gift from the Stranger, not the Maiden.

If Sansa had not been beautiful, Joffrey would have never so enjoyed seeing her cry.

And, as if thinking of her had summoned her, the girl who had been playing Sansa up until this moment reappeared, the Merling Queen and the man playing Joffrey shunted off to the side of the little stage set up on the pleasure barge.

Sansa, with her red hair that was obviously a wig, fell to her knees before a man who was very obviously a dwarf, tear tracks staining her pale face.

“My lord, please,” the girl on stage, pretending to be Sansa, cried out then, and Tyrion grimaced as the dwarf ignored her pleas, reaching for her again.

The Sealord cleared his throat then, rather loudly, his wife noticeably rolling her eyes as the actors came to a sudden halt.

“If we could…” The Sealord said, waving his hands in a gesture for them to get on with the performance, or perhaps at the very least to skip this particular scene.

As if that had called attention to the fact that Tyrion was in the room in the first place, every eye in the room turned abruptly to him, at that moment, and Tyrion wanted nothing more than to disappear the moment they all did.

Instead, he stabbed rather aggressively at his pork, and wondered if the meat belonged to one of those pigs the Sealord kept in his palace, rumored to be as large as horses.

The Sealord’s wife let out a long sigh. “I don’t see why we should have to suffer for the fact that there are squeamish guests here,” she muttered to one of the ladies sitting beside her, but the girl seemed a little too nervous of Tyrion’s presence to bother responding.

The Sealord didn’t try to check his wife, either, merely biting into a thigh and grinning a little as juice dribbled down his chin.

Shae looked away, disgusted.

“I do apologize for the storyline,” the Sealord leaned over to whisper loudly to Tyrion, as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat at the way he could feel every pair of eyes on the pleasure boat following him. “I was unaware, of course, that this was the night you would be arriving here, and I’m afraid that the performers were already hired. They mean no harm in it. But with the tragic death of the late Queen…well, the mummers seem inspired by Westeros once again.”

“Of course,” Tyrion said, softly, taking another long sip of wine and reflecting that it had been rather some time since he’d had a good vintage like this, considering everything that was going on in King’s Landing at the moment.

He had spent a lifetime apologizing for what he was, for nothing more than being a dwarf. It was almost refreshing, to know that the Sealord was apologizing for depicting him as the very thing that the rest of Westeros took for granted as him being.

Even if it meant having to watch a play in which he was nightly raping his lady wife.

He grimaced; it wasn’t as if he was unaware of the fact that the majority of Westeros thought he was doing exactly that, and indeed, Sansa had even claimed as much on several occasions before Joffrey, not wanting to find herself abused by him, instead.

It still made him annoyed, to realize that the world had yet one more reason to hate him, however, and Tyrion found himself quite unable to follow the rest of the play, after that, even as it turned into the epic of the slow love story between Margaery and her dear king.

He paused. “How did you know that I would be here? Your man seemed to find us rather easily, in the city.”

The Sealord turned and smiled rathe coldly at Tyrion, then. “There is little that goes on in this city which I do not know, my friend,” he said, “for all that my people think me far removed from it. The moment I received word that you were coming, I sent for you. I thought it might be easier; today is market day, after all.”

Tyrion hummed, nothing about the words ringing inherently false, but Tyrion had spent far too long in politics to believe them, to not trust himself when his gut was telling him that something the Sealord had just said had been a lie.

Which meant it would probably be for the best to hurry things along.

“I do not mean to bring business to our meal,” Tyrion said tiredly, “But I really am here to approach the Iron bank about a…business proposition. I was hoping I might speak to them soon. It is a matter of…some urgency, you understand.”

The Sealord squinted over at him. “Ah, but there will be time to talk about all of that tomorrow, will there not be?” He asked, dismissively, and Tyrion bit back a sigh, for while the Sealord might have all of the time in the world, his mission here was rather urgent in nature. “Tonight, enjoy yourself, my lord.” His eyes glinted, and Tyrion found him glancing over at Shae again. “Though, perhaps not too much. Your lady seems the jealous type.”

Tyrion rolled his eyes. “She knows she has nothing to be jealous of,” he informed the Sealord, who merely shrugged again, looking almost amused at Tyrion’s words.

“Yes, well, here in Braavos, our ladies are a bit less jealous. She must have spent a great deal of time in Westeros,” he was clearly fishing.

Tyrion grunted. “I wouldn’t know. We have only known one another for a rather short few years.”

“Ah, yes, and a tumultuous few years, at that,” the Sealord said, his voice dripping with false sympathy. “I understand that things in Westeros have been rather…interesting, since the death of Robert Baratheon.”

Tyrion suspected they’d been rather interesting since the death of the Mad King, but he didn’t quite dare to mention as much.

He was far too aware already that he was out of place here, and that the Sealord’s wife, at the very least, would like any reason she could get her hands on to judge him wanting.

“And I don’t suppose,” Tyrion murmured slowly, “That I might be endeared to the Iron bank because of it. The matter that I am here on…it is one of some urgency.”

The Sealord blinked at him, no doubt wondering why he would play his cards in such a way, admitting that the matter he was here on was one of urgency. After all, no doubt the Iron Bank would only make him wait longer, now that they knew of it, because their Sealord knew of it.

But then the Sealord merely hummed, saying, “I can, of course, try to put in a good word with you. I do not know how successful I will be, however.”

Tyrion merely shrugged. “Any word you might be able to put in with them would be appreciated, if this,” he gestured up on to the stage, “is how I am perceived by most Braavosi.”

The Sealord blinked, and then let out a loud laugh. “You Westerosi are far too sensitive,” he informed Tyrion. “But do not worry. I will see to it that such performances are kept from your eyes, for so long as you are here.”

Tyrion dipped his head. “Then you have my thanks,” he murmured.

The rest of the night passed rather mercifully quickly, after that, and Tyrion soon found himself back in the Sealord’s palace, being led, once again by the First Sword, and Tyrion did not think that a coincidence at all, to the chambers he was meant to utilize, “For as long as he remained in Braavos.”

Bronn and Pod got their own chambers, Tyrion noticed, but the one that he and Shae were led to was meant to be shared.

He blinked, glancing back at the First Sword, who merely shrugged, smirking a little. “The Sealord thought that you might be more comfortable together,” he informed Tyrion, who narrowed his eyes at the man, but the First Sword made his exit soon enough.

Tyrion was still trying to figure out that man, who was good enough with a sword to be the finest champion in all of Braavos, but looked rather unintimidating, so far.

Tyrion supposed he would just have to avoid pissing him off, in any case.

Shae walked into the rather large, beautiful rooms (finer than the ones he’d been given after the Battle of Blackwater, in any case) before him, her mouth parting slightly before she turned to face Tyrion once more, and he grimaced at the look on her face, knowing that it predated a lecture.

“I don’t like this,” Shae said, her voice clipped and displaying a bit more of her accent than Tyrion usually heard from her.

She was nervous, he could tell, and he wondered why, after she’d spent so much time in the presence of the nobles of King’s Landing, she might be nervous at the prospect of sleeping in the Sealord’s palace. Or if she was more nervous about having to spend time alone with Tyrion, once again.

The man might be annoyingly wealthy and pompous about it, but he was still just a man, just as Joffrey was still a mad little boy.

He raised an eyebrow. “I think we’ll be fine, Shae. The Sealord seems hospitable enough, and he knows why we’re here.”

“That’s what you said about Sansa, too,” Shae muttered resentfully, and Tyrion felt his stomach sink, at the reminder.

“Sansa will be safe, too,” he pointed out, uncertain how he could explain the rest to her without explaining all of it, and he damned well didn’t want to have to explain the rest of it.

He knew that Shae hated his horrid family as badly as he did, but he didn’t think she would understand, when he explained that he had left Cersei and Joffrey to die at the hands of Olenna’s army, and that he was gambling with the lives of his brother and the niece and nephew he did give a shit about, in coming here at all.

That had been her price for their lives, after all, alongside handing over Sansa Stark, his little wife who had never really been his wife to begin with

He closed his eyes.

"How long have you known?" he asked, because now that they were alone, he couldn't resist asking the question, and he didn't want this conversation to devolve into yet another fight over the fact that he had left Sansa with the Tyrells. He glanced down at her very thin stomach.

Shae licked her lips. "I didn't," she whispered, and Tyrion scoffed, because surely she, of all women, should have known. She shook her head. "I had...worries, of course. But I didn't know."

She was lying, he could see that in her eyes, but he didn't call her out on it, because he loved her, and because he didn't want to stomach the thought of yet another woman lying to him, like that. He was tired enough already.

“If he knows why you’re here, anyway, then why aren’t we already speaking with the Iron Bank?” Shae demanded, annoyance bleeding into her tone, and suddenly, Tyrion understood.

He walked forward, reaching out to put a hand on her arm, before he hesitated, drawing back. She was turned away from him in any case, so he didn’t think that she noticed.

Because he doubted she had been back to the Free Cities since she had first left them, on the arm of a man who owned her, as a whore, when she was barely more than a child.

She’d only told the story to him once, in confidence, though he suspected she’d told Sansa the story as well, and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t given it some thought, before bringing her here.

But at the same time, he knew that Olenna Tyrell would want to make sure that all of the ladies surrounding Sansa at Highgarden were ladies loyal to House Tyrell, and not ones that she might believe were spying for Tyrion or for Cersei.

She would never have let Shae serve Sansa in any capacity, if she’d remained there to look out for her, and that was why he hadn’t asked her to.

And, a selfish part of him thought, he hadn’t wanted to leave he behind with Sansa, either, not when this would be the first time that the two of them could be together, openly, without facing his family’s retribution for it.

There was something intoxicatingly tempting, about the thought.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and Shae turned around to face him then, his hands thankfully clasped before him, now. “I didn’t know how it would hurt you, to come here.”

Shae sniffed. “But you did,” she whispered. “I think you did know, when you insisted on dragging me from my bed in Highgarden, from my lady there, and bringing me here, instead, and you did it anyway. Because that is what you do, isn’t it, my lord?” She asked, and her tone was so hard that Tyrion flinched a little, hearing it. “Make decisions for everyone else without letting them have proper input.”

Tyrion cringed. “Shae, you know why we went to Highgarden in the first place. If I’d left Sansa to her own devices in King’s Landing, she’d have gotten herself killed, trying to murder Joffrey without putting a single thought into what she was doing.”

Shae scoffed. “If you don’t think she’s put quite a bit of thought into seeing Joffrey dead, I’m rather afraid that you’re mistaken,” she muttered, and Tyrion grimaced.

“That’s not what I…Look,” he said patiently, and it only served to make Shae look more annoyed, something she’d become increasingly obvious about, in recent days, “I was trying to protect her. I still am.”

Shae shook her head. “The Tyrells only cared about her while the Queen lived because she had a special friendship with Margaery Tyrell,” she pointed out. “Olenna only cares about her now because she wants to have a claim to the North that will take away many of the Lannister supporters. She doesn’t give a fuck about Sansa.”

Tyrion gritted his teeth. “Yes, but she doesn’t actively want to rape or beat her, either,” he pointed out, for he knew damn well that Joffrey would like to do just that very thing, and would have, if Tyrion hadn’t come up with that excuse to get Sansa out of King’s Landing, now that his wife wasn’t around to stop him or keep his interest. Shae rolled her eyes.

“And she would have been safe from that here, too,” she pointed out. “Or at the very least, I would have felt safer about leaving her with the Tyrells if I had stayed behind with her, as well.”

Tyrion sighed. “Brienne of Tarth will protect her,” he said, with certainty, for he remembered how glum his brother had looked, knowing that Brienne was going with Sansa to Highgarden rather than remaining behind with him.

Dear gods, he’d all but begun to suspect the two of them of sleeping together, and he was quite certain that Cersei suspected the same, at this point, even if her judgment might be rather skewed, on the matter.

And then, the moment she’d learned that Sansa was to go to Highgarden, Brienne had insisted on coming with them, coming to see Tyrion and demanding that he allow her to fulfill her oath to Catelyn Stark.

Since he’d been planning all along to get Sansa out of Joffrey’s clutches by handing her over to the rather power-hungry Tyrells, who had, after all, just proved themselves willing to go against Joffrey and the Crown in any manner that they damn well pleased, he’d thought it wouldn’t be that difficult of an argument, convincing Olenna to let her stay there, instead. He supposed he was rather relieved, though, to know that at least one person in Highgarden had Sansa’s best interests in mind, even though the knowledge that Baelish had slithered his way into Olenna Tyrell’s ear unsettled him greatly.

“Brienne of Tarth has been in King’s Landing since the King’s marriage,” Shae said, doubtfully, but at least she wasn’t openly scoffing, now. “She hasn’t lifted a finger to help Sansa, either, in all of that time.”

Tyrion pinched the bridge of his nose. “Because she’s widely regarded as a kingslayer, there,” he pointed out. “They weren’t just going to let her…”

“And do you think the Tyrells, who once openly helped Renly Baratheon’s cause, are going to think of Brienne of Tarth as less of a kingslayer than Joffrey did, Joffrey, who held a feast when he’d learned that his uncle was dead?” Shae spat out.

Tyrion sighed. “I don’t want to fight about this any longer,” he said, turning towards the rather large bed sitting between them, now.

He pulled off his shoes, ignoring the mocking laugh that Shae gave, at his words.

“No, you don’t want to talk about it,” she corrected him. “Because you’ve already made up your mind that you made the right decision, and that’s that. It doesn’t matter what I think about it, because I’m not your wife, I’m just your whore.”

Tyrion flinched at those words, spinning around to face her, his shoes rather forgotten at her words.

Because he knew, of course he did, how it affected Shae, to see Sansa acknowledged as his wife every day, even if she knew for a fact that he had never once shared a bed with her, that he didn’t love her, even if she herself had begun to love the girl as something like a sister.

Or a daughter, a traitorous part of him whispered, and Tyrion flinched a little, thinking it, because he’d hardly been much of a father to Sansa in that case, had he?

“Well then, if you want to talk so damn much, perhaps we ought to talk about what that fortune teller said, in the marketplace,” he snapped out, not realizing how much it had affected him until this moment, when he saw the way that Shae flinched at his tone.

He grimaced, backing down a little, but Shae’s face had gone as white as it had in the marketplace, when the fortune teller had first mentioned it.

Tyrion reached up, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Dear gods,” he muttered softly, then, because this was what he truly wanted to speak of, “Did you know?”

“Of course not!” Shae spat, and her eyes were glittering with her fury, now. “Of course not, because she was…she had to be lying. It can’t be.”

She said the words with the same sort of quiet desperation that Sansa had entailed when she’d spoken of her attempts to commit treason with Stannis Baratheon.

Tyrion closed his eyes, feeling a migraine coming on. Or perhaps he was only now aware of it, and it had been blooming behind his eyes ever since the fortune teller had first spoken, in the marketplace.

“Shae…” he said, mustering up some patience that he most assuredly did not feel, “Are you…certain that she was mistaken?”

When he opened his eyes again, Shae’s lips had parted slightly, like she was shocked at the question, and then she was shaking her head, hard, as she all but fell onto the edge of the bed, she sat down upon it so hard.

“Of course she was mistaken,” she whispered. “She had to be. Don’t you understand? I…” she swallowed hard. “I would know.”

Tyrion reached out for her then, and then hesitated. “Shae…” the migraine was becoming something else, now, something painful and frustrated, and he knew that he dare not take out that frustration on her, but dear gods, ever since the fortune teller had mentioned as much, he’d been thinking about it.

Had been off, the whole time he’d been speaking with the First Sword, and then with Antaryon, because dear gods, if she was right and Shae really was…

“I missed my moon’s blood, last month,” Shae whispered, her voice soft and fearful, reminding him almost of a child’s, and Tyrion closed his eyes again. “I…I didn’t think anything of it. My moon’s blood is not as regular as I understand most women’s to be. But I…”

She reached down then, running both hands absently over her stomach, and for a moment, Tyrion found himself wondering if she even realized she was doing it.

He swallowed hard, and this time, when he did move towards her, and she didn’t try to pull away, he reached out and clasped her hands in his. She stared down at their entwined fingers, looking almost frantic.

And he thought he saw some of the same fears in her eyes as he felt in his own, when she looked up again and met his gaze.

Dear gods, if the fortune teller was right, though he’d never put much stock in fortune tellers and didn’t know how she would have known, then…

Dear gods.

Tyrion had spent a lifetime whoremongering, and never thought more of the women that he’d fucked, the next morning, because he’d had one whore and so necessarily must have them all.

And he knew that his first…that Tysha, she had not fallen pregnant, not even after all of Tywin’s men had raped her and then paid her for it, not when he had fucked her next, and Tyrion had sworn to himself, even as the child that he’d been back then, that if somehow she did become pregnant, he would defy his father and help her with the child, because even if she had only been a whore that his brother had bought for him, he wouldn’t abandon her like that.

He knew damn well what it was like to grow up as a lonely child.

But he’d thought, after all of the whores he’d had since then, after all of the years of drinking and whoring and doing what he damned well pleased, that if he was going to have a child, he would have had one, by now.

He’d all but assumed that he was incapable of it, for he’d no doubt had as many women as Robert Baratheon had managed, during his time as king, and everyone knew how many bastards he’d sired.

Enough for Cersei to purge them from the world, in order to protect her own bastards.

Tyrion grimaced. Cersei.

Dear gods, if Cersei found out about this, she would do more than just threaten to have his whore killed, would do more than just try to torment him with the knowledge that no matter what he did to try and protect her, Shae would never quite be safe, in King’s Landing.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

It was difficult enough, trying to protect a child like Sansa, in King’s Landing. He couldn’t imagine trying to protect a newborn babe, and he knew now that Shae would not leave him, no matter how he attempted to manipulate her into doing so.

He sucked in a breath, and only then realized how hard he’d been finding it in the moments before, to breathe.

Shae was looking rather alarmed now, where she sat before him on the bed, was staring at him like she knew what he was thinking, like she knew, as he did, that a child would hardly be a blessing, for the two of them.

Because Tyrion was married to another woman, even if she was one that he had never shared his bed with, and even if she couldn’t care less that he was bedding her maid, Joffrey would just use it as another means of tormenting…

If this plan of Olenna’s worked, Joffrey would not be able to torment Sansa ever again, Tyrion realized, swallowing hard. Because Tommen would be sitting on the Iron Throne, or what was left of it, surrounded by Flowers, and Cersei and Joffrey would be dead.

But the moment that fear was gone from his mind, another took his place. Because he had always assumed himself incapable of having children for a reason, because it was not as if he was just a regular man.

He was a dwarf, and no doubt, if he did have a child, it would be just as horrifying a monster to the rest of the world as he had been. He’d heard of such things, from the maesters. The curse of half men.

And he had split his mother open, in being born into this world.

He looked at Shae, and thought she must be rather smaller than his own mother had been, and felt his stomach sink.

But perhaps…perhaps he was worrying for nothing, perhaps, if she even truly was pregnant, this child would be normal, would be like her, rather than like him.

It was a possibility, even with a dwarf for a father. There were not many dwarves, after all, and so it was hard to know for certain.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Fuck, fuck.

“You’re not…angry?” Shae asked, almost hesitantly, as he became aware of how silent he’d been, these past few moments. “This is…” she bit her lip. “This is Braavos. If we wanted to be rid of it…”

She trailed off, but he knew what she wasn’t saying. This was a land well known for its courtesans, and every courtesan lost their worth the moment the world knew them to be with child, so it necessarily followed that there were plenty of ways to be rid of a child, in a place like this.

Still, something like horror thrummed up inside of Tyrion, at the very suggestion of such a thing.

Even if this child was…impossible for them to have, they had only found out about it today. He could not countenance such a thing.

He swallowed hard, shaking his head, remembering that when he had been little more than a child himself, his sister had gleefully told him about such operations. Had told him, with tears in her eyes, how she wished her mother had consented to such an operation the moment she knew that the birthing of her youngest child was going to be difficult.

That she’d cut Tyrion out of her womb before he could kill her, as indeed, he had.

But he couldn’t think about that, because if this child was normal, and he was worrying for nothing, then he certainly didn’t want Shae to worry about such things, and perhaps that was selfish, on his part, but he found himself suddenly unable to care.

“No,” he said, instantly, and Shae blinked at him, still looking confused. “No, we’re not doing that. Not,” he sucked in a breath, “Not until we know there is no other choice.”

Shae swallowed thickly. “Tyrion…” she began, and her accent was thick with her worry, just now.

Worry for him, he realized, not for the child within her, not even for herself.

Because she thought that he was in denial.

And dear gods, perhaps he was, but he had come here to damn two members of his family already.

He would prefer not to damn another when it did not even exist, yet.

Tyrion sighed. “Shae, there is something you should know. The maesters, they’ve always warned me that any child I might have would be likely to be…like me.”

Shae’s head jerked up, and Tyrion felt the small spark of hope he’d felt earlier, hope for something he’d never truly believed he could have, fading at the look. “And I don’t want…It is your choice, of course, but if anything were to happen to you, because of me…”

He could barely bring himself to utter the words.

Shae looked away. “But if I were to keep it. This will make things difficult for you,” she whispered. “I know you told the King that you were most likely unable…”

“Olenna plans to kill the King,” Tyrion interrupted her, then, and Shae paused, staring at him incredulously.

The two of them stood and sat in silence for several moments then, before Shae whispered, still looking bemused, “What.”

Tyrion lifted his chin. “That is why I left Sansa in Highgarden with the Tyrells,” he said. “Because I met with Olenna in secret, and she told me that her plan, here, her goal, is to see Joffrey and his wretched mother, my dear sister, dead for their crimes against her family, and then she will spare Tommen and Myrcella so long as I handed the North over to her.”

Shae’s fists clenched, at her sides. “You can’t be serious,” she whispered.

Tyrion didn’t quite meet her eyes. “Joffrey was responsible for Willas’ death, Shae,” he informed her, gently. “Or, at the very least, Cersei was, but Olenna seemed convinced that Joffrey was equally to blame. And Cersei no doubt killed Margaery and Loras.”

Shae swallowed. “They…their ship sank,” she whispered doubtfully, shaking her head slightly, but he could see something of the truth in her eyes, the doubt creeping in.

No doubt, Sansa was just as convinced that Cersei had something to do with Margaery’s death, and had shared as much with Shae already. Perhaps Shae had merely thought it the ravings of a woman in love, before Tyrion.

And now here Tyrion was, claiming the exact same things.

Tyrion sighed, trying to make her see what he’d known from almost the moment that ship’s captain had walked into the throne room, believing that Joffrey would possibly let him live for failing his queen in such a way, and announced that the Queen was dead.

“Conveniently for Cersei, who has always hated the both of them for stealing her children away from her.”

Shae closed her eyes. “So…and…” her eyes flew open again. “And you just agreed?”

Tyrion licked his lips, uncertain that he could explain his reasons for agreeing even now, to a woman that he loved and who knew the horridness of his dear family.

But he knew that he had to try, if he was going to convince her that he could in fact protect the child within her womb.

“I…” he swallowed hard, and thought of all the reasons he had agreed with Olenna, a woman who was by rights his enemy, had agreed to hand over his own sister and nephew to her to be slaughtered, as he had no doubt that she would do, from the steel and the grief in her eyes.

“Her army is going to sack King’s Landing whether I agree to it or not,” he explained, gently, but Shae was looking at him with horror in her eyes, now, and Tyrion swallowed hard, suddenly rather worried that perhaps he should have shared this with her on the ship here, so that she could not escape him into a whole, large city that he would no doubt never find her again in.

At least on the ship, she’d have been forced to look at him, something that she wasn’t even quite managing now.

“And she is going to see Cersei dead for her crimes against her family whether I ask her to spare my sister or not,” he continued, and felt something like guilt that he hadn’t at least tried to ask for that, but he’d seen the cold fury in Olenna’s features, as she spoke of her hatred for Cersei, the resolve in them.

Olenna Tyrell was a woman used to being overlooked, as the matriarch of her family, and at the same time, used to getting exactly what she wanted. She reminded Tyrion, in many ways, of his own father, with the lengths that she was willing to go to, for her family, even if he thought her plan of attacking King’s Landing rather shortsighted.

And she had just lost, in such quick succession, three of her grandchildren. There was nothing that could hold her back from getting her revenge on Cersei, now.

Tyrion had known better than to stand in her way.

“At least this way, I will be able to keep Myrcella, Tommen, and Jaime safe from her wrath,” he went on. “She is…not an unreasonable woman. She knows that they are not to blame for what happened to her own grandchildren, and she also knows that without Tommen, she doesn’t have a hope for a credible claim to the Iron Throne.”

Shae licked her lips, still looking horrified. “And you expect her to just…keep her word?” She asked, incredulously.

Tyrion grimaced. Yes, that was the most difficult part of this plan. These days, the Tyrells were not known for keeping their word, not with the way that they’d first stood by Renly, and then turned around and pledged their fealty to Joffrey, when he had no choice but to take Margaery for a bride if he wanted their help.

And then, the moment Margaery was dead, they’d declared Joffrey a bastard and claimed war on the Crown in the next breath.

But Tyrion had looked into Olenna’s eyes as she’d told him her plans, and he might be a fool, after seeing how easily her granddaughter had managed to manipulate his nephew, but he did believe her.

Besides, this was all in her best interests, after all.

“I do,” he whispered, and Shae stared at him, for she knew him not to be a man of great faith in people. “Gods help me, but I do. And I’m here, aren’t I?”

Shae raised an eyebrow at him, then. “Then why are you here?” She asked, softly. “If we’re not here to get more support for the Crown, to swing the Iron Bank in our favor…”

“We’re here to ask the Iron Bank not to honor its loans to my sister’s son at all,” Tyrion said, softly. “To transfer them over to House Tyrell, that House Tyrell might control the loans.”

Shae blinked at him. “What…why would Olenna want that?”

“Because pissing off the Iron Throne is a fucking stupid idea,” Tyrion said, tiredly, not entirely certain how they’d gotten onto this topic of conversation from moments ago, when he’d learned that Shae was…

That she was…

“If the Tyrells take up the loan and pay it off, the moment they are controlling the throne, they will have the Iron Bank’s goodwill. And because if this plan doesn’t quite go in Olenna’s favor, she wants to be able to control the Lannisters and the Crown even more than she already does,” Tyrion said, softly.

Shae swallowed hard. “And you’re…you think this is a good idea,” she said, slowly.

“I think Tommen will make a better king than his brother, yes,” Tyrion said, with conviction, because even if he was uncertain about all of the rest of it, how they were going to survive in a world where Shae was pregnant with his child, how trustworthy the Tyrells were going to end up being….

He knew that, at the very least.

Shae glanced away, biting down hard on her lower lip. “And in this new world that you are creating with the Tyrells,” she continued, “You truly believe that we…would be safe?”

And Tyrion…Tyrion did not want to give her the hope that was already blooming inside of him, because he knew that it would be cruel, if things did not go their way, but dear gods, she had just told him that she was pregnant with his child.

“In all likelihood,” he said, not meeting her eyes because he didn’t want to see the hope there, in case one day soon he would have to destroy it, “The Tyrells will want my marriage to Sansa annulled. They will believe that she ought to be married to one of their own, to better strengthen their own claim to the North.”

Which meant that he and Sansa had never been truly married, for Olenna would settle for nothing less than that.

And Tyrion…Tyrion would be free.

And if he was free, then it wouldn’t matter, that this child between them was a bastard, and that Cersei would always loathe it, because she wouldn’t be there to loathe it, and Sansa wouldn’t still be his wife.

It was funny, wasn’t it, how he’d spent all of this time with a wife who resented him for taking her freedom from her, and now, finally, he would be the one free of her? Free to be with the woman he wanted.

Funny, and rather sad, for she doubted even the Tyrells’ kindness extended to letting her have her pick of husbands, when they wanted the North so badly.

Shae’s eyes flew up to meet his. “You mean…” she trailed off then, clearly having a hard time with the subject.

“I’ve never thought of you like that,” he scolded her, because he was getting tired of her constantly thinking so, of her constantly bringing that up to win any and all arguments between the two of them. “What you said earlier, about just being my whore. Sansa is just a child, and I am doing what I think is best to protect her. I would have told you beforehand, but there wasn’t time, and I didn’t think that there was anything you could do.”

She licked her lips, staring down at their clasped hands in silence. Then, “Well, next time, do try to let me know,” she said, and Tyrion dipped his head, agreeing. “I don’t…I didn’t like leaving her, without even getting the chance to say goodbye.”

Tyrion swallowed hard; he’d known, of course, that she wouldn’t, because despite everything he’d put her through, hiding her in King’s Landing like his shameful little secret, forcing her to become Sansa’s lady in the first place, and then marrying the girl, she was a good woman.

Had always been too good of a woman for him, and perhaps that was why it had taken him so long to truly understand how he felt about her.

Shae sighed, sinking down onto the bed and starting on her own shoes, glancing around the opulent room rather suspiciously. “You don’t think the tigers roam the halls while we all sleep, do you?” She asked.

Tyrion shot her a wry glance. “I think they’re probably locked away at night at the very least,’ he said dryly, and she sighed.

“When I was a little girl, in Lorath, we used to hear tales about the Sealord’s menagerie,” she said. “I don’t think it was the same sealord back then, of course, but we all heard about the strange creatures he kept. There were even rumors that he had dragon’s eggs.”

Tyrion scoffed. “If he had dragons eggs, I think everyone would have heard about it,” he said. “Or they’d have been on display, the moment we walked inside the palace.”

Shae chuckled a little, still looking strained, but better now, he thought, than before, and that was something of a relief. “This place does almost make the Keep look shabby,” she admitted, some of the most civil words she had said to him of late, he supposed, and Tyrion snorted.

“It’s mostly fake gold, you know, on the walls,” he pointed out, divesting himself of his shirt and climbing into the bed beside her, pulling the blankets back, though it was rather warmer in Braavos than he was used to, even after all of the time he’d spent in King’s Landing.

Shae didn’t seem to notice the heat, however, still lost in thought as she stared up at the ceiling above them. “I don’t think the marble is, though,” she murmured, looking tired, and Tyrion felt a pang of sympathy.

They had spent the last few days tossing and turning on a ship, though he wasn’t too prideful as to admit that Shae had better sea legs than him, and then the majority of today walking about and pretending to be entertained by the Sealord’s elaborate tour of this place, and that horrid little play he’d made them watch.

Well, Tyrion had a feeling his wife had been more involved in choosing the particular play than he had been, and that was just as well.

He was rather used to every woman he came into contact with, save for Shae, loathing his very existence before he said more than two words to them. He supposed it was only par for the course here, as well.

“The Iron Bank cannot just be summoned on a whim,” Tyrion informed her, gently. “They are the most powerful institution in the world, and very aware of it. We will see them when they wish to see us, if they ever do.”

Shae pursed her lips, sitting up a little in the bed. “And if they don’t?” She whispered.

Tyrion shook his head. “I’m just going to have to insist,” he said, turning and burying his head in her long locks.

She let out a sigh that might have been a moan, turning away from him. “Not tonight,” she said, as she’d said every night since they’d left Highgarden, and Tyrion sighed as well, pulling away from her and coming to a rest on his back with a long, unhappy sigh.

Shae didn’t bother to turn around and comfort him about it, merely started breathing in longer, deeper breaths as the moments ticked by, until Tyrion was quite certain that she was asleep.

But sleep alluded him for quite some time.

And when it finally did come, his dreams were full of Shae, screaming her way through a birth that she would not survive, rather than Sansa this night, screaming at him for leaving her behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can probably tell, these chapters are going to be a bit longer than RFWT's.
> 
> Please comment!


	3. The Merling Queen

“If any of you embarrass me tonight,” the Merling Queen said through gritted teeth as she sent a dazzling smile in the direction of the sailor helping her to board the Sealord’s barge, “I’ll have you cleaning out the chamber pots with the servants for the rest of your pitiful existence.”

The sailor looked almost green, with the attention of a courtesan on him. Merebeth doubted he would realize that one woman’s touch was just as good another’s for the rest of his life.

Nor would he ever be touched by someone like the Merling Queen.

He helped the Merling Queen step up onto the barge, and then he was forgotten, altogether, as her mermaids hurried after her, none of them giving him a backward glance.

The lords of the barge all turned as one, the moment the Merling Queen was aboard the barge.

Johanna had told Merebeth, earlier tonight, as they were getting ready for their time on the barge, that the Black Pearl, an even more famous courtesan than the Merling Queen, refused every invitation of the Sealord to come aboard these barges, because she found him vulgar, and so the Merling Queen was the only courtesan these men had the pleasure of seeing, aboard this particular barge, and they drank her in like wine every time she came aboard.

Merebeth was just glad that tonight, out of respect for Tyrion Lannister, much as she did not appreciate the thought of respecting him in particular, there would be no mummer’s plays. They were to make do with their own entertainment tonight, instead.

Merebeth was no fool; she knew that the performances put on by the mummers were only caricatures, tales made up by drunken men likely the night before the first performances, that they were trying to make a simple coin and that the easiest way to do so was to be as scandalous as possible, so no doubt much of it was made up, just as the way that Joffrey always seemed to be a kind and good king was shit.

But she had also seen, on the Sealord’s pleasure barge, which the Merling Queen had been so happy to be invited to, the look on Tyrion Lannister’s face when he’d seen the performance about the King and Queen, his own role in being such a cruel husband to Sansa, and she knew.

She knew that there was guilt in his eyes, because she’d worn enough faces by now to recognize the look on someone else’s, even if Tyrion Lannister was not someone she knew well at all. And she had spent enough time with his father, in Harrenhall, that she could guess the rest.

And that rather implied, at least to her mind, that there was some truth to what the plays were saying, horrible as they always were.

She licked her lips, trying to remind herself that whether or not there was validity to those plays, they shouldn’t matter to her, not in the least. After all, her name was Merebeth, and she was merely a girl trying to find her way in the world and owing much to the Merling Queen; Sansa Stark should not matter much at all to her, she knew that.

And yet.

And yet, it had taken everything within her, every reminder of what she had suffered to get here, of what she had given up in order to enter the House of Black and White, to keep a girl from attacking Tyrion Lannister where he sat drinking and feasting with the Sealord while he watched a play in which the Imp raped her sister, night after night, until Sansa Stark wanted to throw herself from the Tower of the Hand on the very night that the Queen and King conceived their son.

Because a part of her knew, just as the Waif always taunted her, just as the Kindly Man always warned her, that she would never stop being Arya Stark, no matter how hard she tried to become No One.

She did not have it within her, that capability.

Merebeth swallowed hard, glancing down at her hands, where her nails had dug half moons into her palms. Selene had been ordered to dress her hands the night they had left the pleasure barge, and the girl had been cruel with it, not warning Merebeth before she poured the alcohol onto Merebeth’s palms, and wrapping them rather too tightly.

Merebeth had hated her for that, but she had not protested, because after all, she was just a girl lucky enough to have been chosen by the Merling Queen, and Selene was a lady, the daughter of some merchant who might as well be a lord, as far as Braavos seemed concerned, even if she was a bastard and therefore unable to find a good husband because of it.

Merebeth could count on both hands the number of times she had held her tongue back from berating the other girl for that, for all the things that Selene berated her for.

It was funny; Arya Stark had never given much thought to bastards, to their not being the trueborn sons of their fathers, and therefore not as worthy as the rest, because she had grown up alongside Jon Snow, and he had always been her brother, in her mind.

She had loved him as such, and hated Sansa for treating him as anything less than she treated Robb or Bran.

It was only when No One came to Braavos and saw the strange stratification here that she finally understood what being a bastard meant. That a bastard could have a life here, happy enough but without their family’s inheritance, while in Westeros, they were shamed for their very existence. Just as a whore could have the respect of half the city, where in King’s Landing she had no respect at all.

Even as a child, Arya Stark had understood that.

It was funny, that. How different it was here, in some respects. No One sometimes found herself liking it better, though some things were worse.

But she was no longer Arya Stark, and she had to stop thinking about her. Even now, her eyes teared up a little, at the reminder of what had happened to her the last time she had failed the Many Faced God.

She would not do so again.

She took a deep breath, adjusting her grip on the Merling Queen’s train as she followed the woman into yet another feast put on by the Sealord in order to celebrate the arrival of Tyrion Lannister in Braavos.

She may not have been with the Merling Queen for very long, but Merebeth found it very strange indeed, how the Sealord seemed so excited about the arrival of the Lannister, when the city seemed to care less about Stannis Baratheon’s arrival, here.

Then again, Merebeth had been Blind Beth, then, and perhaps she simply hadn’t understood the bustle of the city. She’d learned that he was here only because of the time she had spent in the harbor, not the Purple Harbor which belonged only to the Braavosi, either, because the Kindly Man said there was not enough gossip to be found there, for her to listen to.

The city of Braavos was fascinated by Tyrion Lannister, and a girl didn’t think it was because he was a dwarf or because he was the Hand of the King, but because so many of them entertained themselves with the stories the mummers played about him, and the fact that he was still Hand of the bloody King.

Not that Arya Stark would have been surprised; it was not as if the Lannisters cared much for morals, after all, or they would not have chopped off her father’s head on the steps of a sept.

She gritted her teeth at the thought. She wasn’t supposed to be thinking about that again, not here.

But today was yet another feast in his honor, and the Merling Queen had once again been invited. Merebeth didn’t think she had designs on the Lannister, but she couldn’t be certain; he would no doubt be something of a catch, for a woman with the influence of the Merling Queen, and she was not a fool; she knew that the Merling Queen traded in favors as much as she did secrets.

She had found that out from only a few weeks in the woman’s employ, and she had no doubt that if she had a while longer, she could figure out which secret it was which had damned her before the Many Faced God.

But the Kindly Man had been clear. A girl was to learn everything she could under the Merling Queen’s employ, for the sake of furthering her studies, and then she was to kill her, no matter how long it did take to learn from under her.

A part of her had wanted to plead sick, when the Merling Queen announced that they were coming to this gathering. Because she had known that Tyrion Lannister as going to be here, and because a part of her was uncertain what she would do again, when faced with him once more.

She had barely been able to restrain herself, the first time, and she had been trying as hard as she possibly could, then.

Now, with all of the talk around Braavos of him, of the reason that he was here with his whore rather than his lady wife, a girl was even less inclined to be good around him, much as she knew that she had to be.

Frankly, she was relieved that he had not recognized her the first time. Then again, she didn’t think he would remember her; they had met only briefly in Winterfell, though they had met, and he had not looked at her twice, at the previous feast.

But she had feared more what the Kindly Man might do to her, if he found out that she had refused to follow the Merling Queen when that was her mission, and why she would have done it would have been obvious to him.

So she had gone, enduring the giggles of the other mermaid at their excitement, at the thought of meeting some great lord, during this feast, because they seemed to care about that sort of thing, all of them.

A girl could not imagine why. The Merling Queen had made their fates clear, when she had taken in Merebeth. They would all be courtesans, one day, like the Merling Queen, though none of them would have quite her allure.

“Go and find something to entertain yourselves with, girls,” the Merling Queen’s voice broke her out of her musings, then, making Merebeth jump with surprise more than it should have been possible for one trained in the House of Black and White to be, and Merebeth lifted her head, blinking in surprise when she realized she was standing in the way of the Sealord, who was staring at the Merling Queen rather lustily.

The Merling Queen, far from shying away from the Sealord, was openly smiling at him, even in front of his wife, who stood to her feet from the feasting table and moved to the other side of the barge.

Far away, Merebeth noticed, only because she herself was also watching him, from Tyrion Lannister.

Merebeth grimaced; he was at least thrice the Merling Queen’s age, and they said he was sick; she had heard as much in that tavern, though the Kindly Man had told her not to believe everything she heard, which was almost amusing, now, after her eyes had been taken from her and restored.

And, beyond that, the Sealord’s wife was standing not far away, conversing with the whore who had followed Tyrion Lannister to Braavos and who looked nothing like Sansa Stark, glaring at her husband but not daring to intervene so openly, like this.

Merebeth felt a stab of pity for her, but quashed it, immediately. It was not her place, after all, to care about the Sealord’s wife. She was not the one that Merebeth was here for.

Merebeth dipped into a little curtsey, realizing that the Merling Queen was sending her away so that she might have time alone with the Sealord, and glad to be rid of both of them. She found it easier, the less amount of time she spent with someone like the Merling Queen, even if she was meant to be learning everything that she could from the woman.

Merebeth heard the tittering of the woman’s laughter at something the Sealord had said, which was no doubt not as funny as she seemed to find it, before she disappeared into the crowd.

At least today, they were not eating aboard another pleasure barge, and Merebeth found herself wondering, now that she had leave to be alone, if she might be able to sneak into the Sealord’s menagerie, and see all of those animals that, a lifetime ago, a man had once told her of. Animals who shouldn’t all be able to coexist in the same palace, but whom the Sealord had spent a lifetime finding.

She thought that would be a far more interesting use of her time than mingling amongst the lords and merchants at this party, and Merebeth had just made up her mind to sneak out the nearest exit when a man walked straight up to her, a smirk on his face.

Besides, the longer she spent in this room, the more her eyes kept flitting over to Tyrion Lannister, and she was beginning to fear that if she stared at him too long, she would pull out the little knife hidden in the pocket of her gown and stab him through the eye, which she would like desperately to avoid, if she could.

She bit back a groan, tempted to tell him that she was a mermaid and therefore off limits to someone like him, or to anyone, until the Merling Queen decided otherwise, but the man spoke first.

“You look a bit bored,” he said, eying her up and down, and Merebeth barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes, instead looking him over.

He was clearly eager for some company; the Merling Queen insisted on all of her mermaids dressing up in the finest gowns she could buy them, and wearing makeup that would make them look older, as well, but she still looked rather young and ugly, according to Malina, who had eyed her with a raised upper lip.

Johanna had claimed that she looked fine, but Merebeth had felt oddly self-conscious as she made her way to the Sealord’s palace with the rest of the Merling Queen’s retinue.

Johanna was, after all, the kindest of the mermaids, for all that she seemed nothing like the woman whose name she brought to No One’s mind, when she thought of her. She was the only one who had deigned to sleep in the same chambers as Merebeth, after all, and Merebeth pitied her for it.

It must be strange, to sleep beside No One, in the night, even if Johanna didn’t know the truth of who Merebeth really wasn’t.

But Merebeth felt suddenly like she was flailing, in front of the first man on whom she was meant to practice her charms, charms that she was having a difficult time learning from the Merling Queen, just as all dainty sort of lessons had always been hard for her.

She had never been much of a lady, and this, the sort of things that the Merling Queen and the Kindly Man insisted she know, was a step beyond that, she couldn't help but believe.

“I was actually about to go and see the Sealord’s menagerie,” she said, lowering her gaze and trying her best to appear sultry, for all that she knew she would never have to share this man’s bed.

The Merling Queen would not send her out so early, that she might embarrass her, after all, and in any case, she had heard the Merling Queen telling Selene that it was a good thing she was so young, that they had time to train her before she was completely hopeless.

For all that she knew that she was here to learn because the Kindly Man demanded she know such skills, Merebeth had found those words to be something of a relief, if she was being honest with herself.

The man - sellsword, her mind supplied, based on the outfit that he wore and the fact that he still had a sword at his side, though that was forbidden in the Sealord’s palace for all save the First Sword, and he was certainly not that man - eyed her up and down, and then said, “Perhaps you would appreciate some company.”

It was all Merebeth could do not to roll her eyes, that time. “If you like,” she said, and then moved close to him, the way she saw the Merling Queen do and it always made the men she was talking to rather wild, “But it would only be to see the menagerie.”

She realized only after she said the words that they might as well have been a euphemism, but the sellsword only looked amused, at her words.

“Well, perhaps you’ll just settle for my company, instead,” he said, with a smirk that said he rather knew the ways of the world, but Merebeth had not doubted that, as he was a sellsword.

She hummed. “I was actually just thinking I would enjoy it more on my own,” she said, and started forward, only for one of the merchants behind the sellsword to bump rather abruptly into him.

He gritted his teeth as he fell into her, but that didn’t matter, not to No One, who reared up even with a rather shaky Merebeth grimacing, at the way the sellsword had accidentally fallen into her chest.

And she couldn’t help what No One did next, because she was Merebeth, who was a rather weak little thing, after all.

So when she shoved him off of her with rather more force than one of the Merling Queen’s mermaids ought to have, and he fell back into the merchant who had originally hit him, she felt only marginally bad for it.

Elbowing him in the groin, however, was not quite as instinctual, but No One enjoyed it a little too much, with how much of her he had touched, moments ago.

But the moment it was done, she knew she’d made a terrible mistake. Merebeth would never have fought off a suitor in that way, even if he had been rather accidentally inappropriate with her.

And the Merling Queen was going to kill her, for embarrassing her at this feast, as the whole of the feast suddenly seemed to stop with her actions, all eyes on her.

Well, not quite all eyes, but damned well enough of them, even as the sellsword raised his hands and took a step back from her, something that she wasn’t about to misconstrue as pity in his eyes as he did so.

“I…I’m sorry,” Merebeth gasped out, her cheeks flushing as she lowered her gaze. “I…I didn’t mean to imply…Well, I am only a recent learner of the Merling Queen, and not a very good one, at that.”

The sellsword’s eyes glanced down her figure as before, a bit more calculating now, and his eyes dark but not with lust, and this time, to her surprise, he took a step back, looking suddenly disgusted, but she didn’t quite think that it was with her.

She wondered, then, if he’d realized what the rest of the men in this room had not; that she was younger than she appeared, even with the assistance of the Merling Queen’s cosmetics.

It didn’t seem to stop any of them from looking, after all.

Because he was just a sellsword, after all, and she didn’t know why he would be pitying her. Nor why he would be wearing his sword to a party that he wasn’t supposed to be wearing a sword to at all.

Dear gods, she thought, and it was a thought that didn’t much make sense, for Merebeth believed only in one god, she was really making a mess of this. She wasn’t supposed to draw nearly so much attention to herself, not with the plans that the Kindly Man had for her, and here she was, no doubt about to find herself removed from the Merling Queen’s service for embarrassing her.

And even if she did remain in the woman’s service, she couldn’t imagine reacting in any other way than she had, and she had a terrible feeling that she would face the Kindly Man’s wrath for her failure to separate one self from the other, when she did.

And then the Merling Queen, who had been watching her, she had no doubt, from the moment she walked away with the Sealord, was gliding forward with total elegance, smiling demurely and dipping her head to the sellsword as she neared.

He seemed to forget all about Merebeth, in that moment.

“Forgive my…protege,” the Merling Queen told the sellsword, reaching out and placing a delicate, gloved hand on his arm, though it must be terribly hot, in here. “She is very new, and very unfamiliar with her duties, so far.”

The sellsword smiled, looking just as uncomfortable as Merebeth felt, though that was no doubt due to the number of people looking at all of them, now. Eyes seemed to follow the Merling Queen wherever she went, after all.

The sellsword finally muttered, “It’s fine,” and moved as if to make his escape.

The Merling Queen didn’t quite let him. “I am sure I can have one of my…more competent ladies make it up to you, later. Are you staying in the palace?”

The sellsword licked his lips then, glancing at Merebeth once more, eyes drifting down to her undeveloped chest, before muttering, “I think I’ll be fine.”

The Merling Queen pouted a little, at those words. “Surely you don’t mean that,” she said, her voice coy, now. “All of my ladies besides this one are…quite skilled.”

The sellsword grimaced, and hurriedly made his escape, though now even Merebeth was staring after him in confusion.

It was not everyday that the Merling Queen admitted, after all, that any of her ladies were not maidens.

And then the party seemed to go back to its shaky beginnings, and the Merling Queen rounded on Merebeth. “Come, we’re going,” she snapped, and Merebeth’s eyes widened a little.

“I…I didn’t mean…” she began, a stuttering mess, because that was how someone who had as much to lose as Meredith might react, but the Merling Queen only scoffed.

“Selene!” She called out, and the other mermaid, where she was busy entertaining a rather robust lord, turned around with a look on her face that instantly transformed into annoyance, the moment she noticed Merebeth standing next to the Merling Queen. “Come along, and find the other girls. We’ve decided to retire, for the night.”

There were audible groans around them, though the men in the room with wives were doing their best to pretend they weren’t looking at her, or, hells, weren’t noticing her at all.

They were rather worse pretenders than Merebeth or the Merling Queen, she thought, and instantly forced the thought back down.

The Merling Queen walked along, Johanna and Malina holding her robes, neither one of them looking over in Merebeth’s direction as they made their way out of the party, ignoring the frantic calls of the Sealord for them to return, for all was well.

But Merebeth knew that even this was a performance. Tomorrow, all of the men at the party would be talking about how the Merling Queen had left early to discipline one of her mermaids, and they would all think her a better teacher for it, a competent one.

Well, the jape was on them, for Merebeth didn’t think that the Merling Queen had taught her a single thing of use.

But then the Merling Queen was getting into her litter, carried by four strong, dark skinned soldiers loyal only to her, her ladies walking silently behind her, and as the dust got in Merebeth’s face, she supposed she had learned at least one thing, about tonight.

The Merling Queen must have a considerable amount of pride, after all.

“Why did you do that?” Johanna asked, at her side, and Merebeth blinked, glancing sideways at the other girl as they walked through the slightly less busy streets of Braavos, now that it was night and they were in the wealthier district of the city.

Merebeth shrugged, grimacing a little, because she truly wasn’t sure. “I…I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just…” she bit her lip. “I just reacted.”

Selene rolled her eyes. “She’s a little brat, that’s why,” she snapped, and the other girls all seemed to listen to her, which had Merebeth grinding her teeth. “She wouldn’t know good breeding, or how to act in society, unless it was pounded into her head.”

Merebeth gritted her teeth. “I would hardly say you’d know that, either,” she said, and Johanna let out an awkward little laugh, at the words.

It didn’t matter that she herself was a bastard, Merebeth knew how to find Selene’s vulnerabilities, especially, and the other girls seemed content to leave the two of them to whatever catfight they were playing at.

Selene shot her a glare, but the glare that she sent Merebeth’s way was far worse.

Malina and Neryia were silent, however. Merebeth had noticed that Malina was always silent, when the Merling Queen was being carried around in her litter, though the men carrying the Merling Queen were not slaves.

She could afford not to have slaves, after all, or so the Merling Queen was always boasting. It was a matter of appearances, apparently.

Merebeth did roll her eyes this time, at the thought.

“Well, thank you for ruining what promised to be a lovely feast, in any case,” Selene said, her eyes slits as she glanced over at Merebeth. “I really don’t know why you’re still here. Your father must have paid the last of his fortune to be rid of you. No doubt on account of your wicked stepmother not wanting you back, either.”

She flushed because that was how Merebeth ought to react but, to her surprise, Neryia came to her defense, at those words.

“We can’t help the families we’re born into,” she snapped. “I should think that you of all people ought to understand that, Selene.”

Selene’s eyes glinted. “What does that mean?” She demanded, but Neryia only smiled slightly, and skipped ahead a little bit.

Selene stuck her tongue out at the other girl behind her back, which struck Merebeth as an oddly childish thing to do, for one who thought she might make some coinage at that party, and another pang of…something filled her, at the thought.

Because in the end, maidens or no, they really were all just children, weren’t they?

But Merebeth had grown up with the rest of them, just as Arya Stark had once been forced to do. The world was never kind to children unless they learned how early on.

No One remembered something the Kindly Man had told her once, that all of the Merling Queen’s mermaids had been lovely, at some point, but were so no longer.

The thought plagued her until they reached the Merling Queen’s manse, a beautiful building sitting up on a hill above the marshlands outside of the city, on display for all to see and attended to by over thirty servants, according to rumors and the count that Merebeth had managed so far.

It was

The servants holding the Merling Queen’s litter gently lowered it, one of them moving to help her out of the litter itself, and the Merling Queen was just as elegant as ever, as she removed herself from it.

And then she was beckoning for Selene and Johanna to take her veil again, and Merebeth rolled her eyes again, now that no one is looking at her, because she wasn’t certain why the mermaids found that to be such an honor, amongst themselves.

She supposed it was better than cleaning chamber pots that the Merling Queen had perfectly functional servants for, but still.

They came to a stop, finally, in the Merling Queen’s parlor, and Merebeth breathed a sigh of relief, for they usually spent the rest of the night reading or sewing, very ladylike pursuits, Merebeth supposed, much though they bored her.

Tonight, though, it appeared that things would be different, as the Merling Queen rounded on her mermaids with a rather annoyed expression.

“Neryia, you are to go to the soldier’s rooms, tonight,” the Merling Queen announced, into the silence, and Neryia grimaced. “The sellsword is Westerosi, and I dare say he will enjoy your exotic looks more than Johanna’s straw colored hair.”

Merebeth felt a pang of sympathy for her, knowing that she was only being sent there in order to make up for the way that Merebeth had acted with him. But then again, Neryia was nearly a woman grown, while Merebeth was nothing more than a girl on the cusp of womanhood, to the Merling Queen’s eyes.

It was what had made her so perfect for this, the Kindly Man had informed her, and Merebeth wished she didn’t know that.

But she supposed that it answered one question; for all the rumors about how they were nothing but innocent virgins, serving the Merling Queen, clearly, Neryia was used to such an order, despite the small sigh that she gave in response to it.

Merebeth didn’t dare look in her direction as she left.

She dipped her head, and hurried out of the room, and the Merling Queen waited only a moment longer before muttering, “Well? Out, all of you.”

Merebeth swallowed, hoping that she could slip out of the room with the rest of them, but alas, that was not to be.

“Not you,” the Merling Queen snapped, her voice cold and deadly, now, and Merebeth closed her eyes and paused, knowing of course who she was referring to.

The other girls did not look in her direction once, not even Johanna, whom Merebeth had thought she was making some progress with, as they made their way out of the Merling Queen’s parlor and to their own chambers.

It was only then that Merebeth turned around, pulling herself up tightly and wondering if she was going to have to accelerate the plan she had made, about coming to this place in the first place, now that she was alone with the Merling Queen for the first time, and the woman seemed so disappointed in her.

But she feared the wrath of the Many Faced God far more than she did the Merling Queen’s.

The Merling Queen eyed her for several long moments, before she let out a long sigh.

“You’ve disappointed me, today,” the Merling Queen told her, and Merebeth lowered her eyes, doing her best to appear contrite.

She thought of how a girl named Sansa would once have acted, if her lady mother had berated her for a similar issue, and swallowed hard.

Merebeth did not know any Sansas, after all, save for the one that was often portrayed by the mummers as Joffrey’s innocent victim or his beloved kitten.

Still, she lowered her head and tried to look contrite. She had a feeling she only looked annoyed, however, given the annoyed look that the Merling Queen sent her in return.

It was just a mercy that the other mermaids were not here to witness her shame, Merebeth thought. They might never have let her hear the end of it, after they already thought the fact that the Merling Queen had taken an interest in her at all to be nothing but charity.

But the Merling Queen had insisted on speaking with her alone, and Merebeth supposed she owed the other woman for that, though the thought of owing anything to one who owed something to the Many Faced God unsettled her.

“Your father sent you here to learn something, to make something of yourself from your pitiful life,” the Merling Queen reminded her, coldly, and Merebeth wondered what the many lords that she serviced might think, to hear her honeyed tongue uttering such words, now.

She reminded herself that Merebeth’s father had brought her here for that very purpose, and that, beyond that, it had been an honor that the Merling Queen had chosen her, a peasant girl, to be one of her mermaids. The gods knew that the other mermaids looked down on her for not being the daughter of some noble or at the very least a merchant, the way most of the other girls were, and if they were not, they were old enough that the other girls didn’t seem to realize this.

Merebeth thought she knew which ones weren’t, though. One could tell, after spending so much time around…

She cleared her throat, swallowing hard. “Yes, m’lady,” she said, remembering what she had one learned from Tywin Lannister about her pronunciations. “I’m sorry. I…panicked.”

The Merling Queen looked her over for several long moments, and then the look in her eyes became almost…sympathetic. She reached out, placing a hand on Merebeth’s shoulder, and it was all that Merebeth could do not to flinch away from the touch.

She couldn’t remember the last time a woman had touched her in kindness. Well, Merebeth couldn’t. Merebeth’s mother had died when she was born, after all, and she had lived a hard life, before the Merling Queen had taken mercy on her in this way.

She struggled not to roll her eyes. It had been easier, playing Cat or Blind Beth. Being them, she meant.

No One certainly didn’t want to be a girl as empty-headed as Merebeth, believing that learning how to please men would somehow make her happy in life.

The Merling Queen suddenly moved over to the single divan in her chambers, sitting down on it and patting the place next to her.

It occurred to Merebeth then, how easily she could move forward and kill the other woman. She had poison in her pocket for that, though she found poison to be a rather cowardly choice. If she’d wanted to, she could do it, she thought.

The Kindly Man had wanted her to learn from this woman, however, so that one day, she could use such skills in the service of the Many Faced God whom No One wasn’t certain she believed in, and so, she stayed her hand, sitting beside the older woman almost warily.

Woman, she thought of the Merling Queen as, but Merebeth could admit that the Merling Queen was in fact no older than San…

She had to stop thinking about the girl portrayed in those plays. That life, the one she kept having flashes of, too many flashes of, was dead, now, and it had almost cost her her current mission, remembering it.

“I remember the first time the previous Merling Queen sent me home with a man,” the Merling Queen said, and Merebeth worried her lower lip, glancing around them nervously, because they were alone here, and she had tried her hardest not to be alone with the Merling Queen, because she still remembered the mummer who had played Cersei and the disaster that had been, but she didn’t let it show on her face, she thought.

She knew why she had failed, then, or nearly failed, in the end. Because she had allowed herself to empathize with a woman who, by all rights, she had reason to hate, and not only because she wore the face of someone on No One’s list.

Merebeth couldn’t forget that. She couldn’t forget how she had nearly staid her hand, in killing a woman who had been fated to die, and that had led to the death of another, because for the Many Faced God, the scales must be even.

Merebeth would not allow herself to start to have feelings for the woman before her, however. She knew that she had failed then; the Kindly Man had punished her for it.

But for some reason, his punishment had not been as harsh as it could have been, and even if she still wondered about that, wondered if it was because of who No One had been in a previous life, she wasn’t going to give him an excuse to make it crueler again.

“I was terrified. I had never been with one before, you see,” the Merling Queen continued, and Merebeth found herself steadily not looking the other woman in the eye.

It struck her, then, that she did not even know the Merling Queen’s name. She may be the most famous woman in all of Braavos, but that didn’t matter, either to the Many Faced God or to the men who shared her bed.

It was the title which drew them to her, not who she was. That was why there had been so damned many Merling Queens before her, and why there would be after her, as well, no matter how gruesome No One made this death.

Merebeth licked her lips, and wondered what sort of sin this particular Merling Queen had paid, in order to find herself of interest to the Many Faced God.

Not that it mattered, in the end. A girl would do what the Many Faced God asked of her. She had learned that harsh lesson far too well already.

She glanced down at her hands in an effort to avoid looking at the Merling Queen.

“And I was terrified from the moment I took that man’s hand of what he was going to do to me. The Merling Queen, the one before me, she told me that it would be fine. That he was…kind,” she murmured, and there was a vulnerability in her voice that Merebeth had yet to hear from the Merling Queen since she had arrived here.

Merebeth swallowed, glancing at her out of the corner of her eye, and finding that of course the Merling Queen was watching her, because why wouldn’t she be, telling a story like this?

“He smelled of wine,” the Merling Queen said, swallowing then, “And too much of it.”

Merebeth’s hands tangled together, and she ducked her head again. “What…what did you do?” She whispered.

The Merling Queen grimaced. “I…did not make it pleasant for myself,” she admitted. “Because I was frightened, and because I thought that he might hurt me, and because I did not want my first time to be with a man who stank of alcohol, and I think he knew all of that from the moment he leaned over me.”

She reached out then, pulling both of Merebeth’s hands into one of hers, and using her other hand to lift Merebeth’s chin, forcing her to look the Merling Queen in the eyes.

Merebeth wondered what her true name was.

She had promised herself that she wasn’t going to wonder about that.

“I would not have the same thing happen to you,” the Merling Queen said, and there was something absurdly gentle in her tone, that had Merebeth shivering, suddenly, though she was still a bit unused to the heat in this damned city.

Merebeth worried her lower lip, but then the Merling Queen was letting go of her, standing to her feet.

“That is all, Merebeth,” she said, and her voice had grown cold once more. “You are dismissed. I suggest you get some rest.”

Merebeth swallowed hard, getting to her feet and ducking into a little curtsey before she made her escape, face heating, though she wasn’t certain why.

After all, she had promised herself she wasn’t going to care about the Merling Queen no matter what the other woman said to her, and it was not as if this one conversation had endeared her to the other woman, in any case, very much.

But when she got back to her chambers, she was relieved to realize that Johanna was already asleep, or at the very least, pretending to be, because she found that she didn’t want to talk to the other girl, after the events of the night, after the things that the Merling Queen had just confessed to her.

Clearly, in some way, the woman cared, and Merebeth hated her for it, just a little.

She peeled off the gown that she wore to the barge, and then climbed into the nightgown laying out on her bed, though she really was supposed to keep her clothing carefully in the little dresser by her bed. It was just her luck that no one had noticed, or, at the very least, that Johanna was nice enough not to get her into trouble for it.

Merebeth didn’t know how long she laid in bed, not sleeping, the room growing gradually darker and darker around her, until she heard a slight noise that was coming from the window, and not the bed that Johanna lay in.

Merebeth sat bolt upright, reaching for the knife that she kept inside her gown at all times, but by then, it was too late.

The Waif was pressing a knife against her throat. She knew it was the Waif, even though the woman was pressed against her back rather than in front of her, by the smell.

Blind Beth had gotten rather good at measuring people by smell and hearing, rather than their looks.

The girl behind her was not a mermaid. She was not even a girl at all, but a woman well grown, and Merebeth shuddered a little, even as she told herself that she didn’t know the girl, because No One knew her.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Merebeth whispered, a soft warning in the night as she glanced over at the little bell left in her chambers for instances such as this. But she did not have these chambers to herself; she shared them with another mermaid, the only one who had been kind to her so far, and she found herself not wanting to see the girl killed, if the woman before her decided to punish Merebeth for acting against her.

And even if she rang the bell, she doubted it would be a satisfying ending; no doubt the Waif would find some way to escape long before the guards paid to ensure the safety of the Merling Queen arrived, rather than Merebeth being able to watch her get skewered, as she would have liked.

“You’ve failed,” the Waif spat quietly, careful not to wake the other mermaid but clearly not heeding Merebeth’s warning. “If you’re not going to do your duty, you’re going to get another lesson, like the last time.”

Merebeth flinched, at her words, her eyes already stinging at the thought of being blinded again. She licked her lips. “I…I haven’t failed yet,” she rallied, hating how gleeful the Waif looked at the thought of her receiving such a lesson. Hating the thought that if she received that lesson again, she would not be able to see the Waif’s smug expression at all. “Tell him that. I’m just trying to find the best time to do it, once I’ve learned everything that he wants me to learn from her. He was the one who told me to approach her, after all.”

The Waif scoffed. “you are a slow learner,” she mused, and Merebeth clenched her teeth.

“Yes,” she agreed, because Merebeth was a slow learner. The Merling Queen kept telling her that, over and over again, because the woman had no idea the danger that her newest protege possessed, and she was fool enough to think that berating her constantly wasn’t going to backfire on her.

Merebeth knew what the Kindly Man would say to that, of course. That she shouldn’t be letting her feelings get in the way; this kill would not be about her own feelings, but because the Many Faced God demanded the Merling Queen’s death.

“But the Kindly Man did demand that I learn such things,” No One went on, and then, because a part of this life had made her cruel, and she hated the Waif anyways, “For skills that I will one day be able to use, and you never will.”

The Waif glowered at her, but No One could see the pain behind her gaze, that she was right, that the Waif was never going to look like the woman that she was, because of all of the time she had spent as a child caring for the dead in the House of Black and White.

It must be strange, to be a woman but still have the face of a child, to know that she always would.

Not that No One was concerned with finding love for herself, of course.

“Just do what you’re here for,” the Waif snapped, finally, her lips pursed and a muscle in her jaw twitching. “Before the Many Faced God decides that you do not deserve his gifts.”

“Is…” Merebeth licked her lips. “Is that an order of the Many Faced God?”

The Waif rolled her eyes. “You ask many questions for one who has faced the punishment of the Many Faced God, and lived to see his mercy.”

Merebeth gritted her teeth. “And yet, clearly, the Many Faced God favors me over you,” she muttered, and the Waif raised a hand as if to slap her, and then glared in resentment over at the other sleeping mermaid.

Despite herself, Merebeth smirked. She knew how sensitive the Waif was, for all that she preached, alongside the Kindly Man so often, that someone who was No One should be able to set aside their feelings easily enough.

If Merebeth couldn’t do it as much as she would like, she was gratified to know that the Waif also had problems with doing so.

Finally, gritting her teeth, the Waif hissed, “Yes, it’s an order. So get it done, or you might have to be Blind Beth again.”

Merebeth shuddered, but the Waif had vanished before she could see it. Merebeth consoled herself in the knowledge that her fear was only shown to the night, and not to a woman whom she knew would gladly relish it.

The night felt a little colder, knowing that.

But still, Merebeth was rather surprised that Johanna had managed to sleep through that whole exchange.

* * *

Merebeth took a deep breath, pausing outside of the door of the Merling Queen’s private chambers before she knocked.

She knew what she had to do; of course she did. She had come here with that very purpose, after she learned everything that she needed to from the Merling Queen, which of course hadn’t happened, because Merebeth was almost as inept at being the Merling Queen’s mermaid as Arya Stark had been as a lady.

And both of them were about to be gone, at the very least.

She gritted her teeth, taking a deep breath, and then another.

And then she knocked.

She hadn’t done what she was meant to, in coming here. The Kindly Man had not given her enough time to learn anything from the Merling Queen, even if she had been better at the sorts of things that he would have wanted her to learn.

But clearly, something had changed, because the Kindly Man had given her no opportunity to learn more about what the Merling Queen did, and now, he simply wanted her dead. Something had changed enough to make the Kindly Man nervous, and if it was enough for that, than it was making a girl nervous, as well.

Merebeth squeezed her eyes shut.

She had to do this. The Kindly Man wanted the Merling Queen dead, because whatever she had done, her name had come before the Many Faced God.

Or, the Waif did.

And a girl didn’t know whether she ought to believe anything that the Waif came to tell her in the dead of night, even if she ought to assume that the Waif had been there as a messenger for the Kindly Man.

Merebeth swallowed.

She had a job to do, and whether or not the Waif had been doing as she was supposed to, whether or not this was some sort of test, she had her orders.

If she was wrong about this, if the Waif was lying as a way to trick her, to make her look bad before the Kindly Man, than she could always see the Waif punished for it.

She glanced behind her, but she had made sure that the other girls were sleeping, before she had gone to do this at all. A few drops slipped into their slightly parted lips, and she knew that they wouldn’t be waking until the morning.

By then, it would be far too late.

She knocked again, grimacing slightly when she saw one of the Merling Queen’s servants coming down the hallway, glancing sideways at her.

Merebeth sent a small smile her way, and the servant lifted her chin and kept walking.

Merebeth had never quite been able to tell how the Merling Queen’s servants felt about her, as a person. They were all silent; Merebeth had noticed that some of them no longer possessed their tongues, though she didn’t know if that was because they had been cut out when they came to work for the Merling Queen, or not.

She supposed that it made sense, for a woman who traded in secrets to want to make sure that none of her servants could use them against her, as well.

The serving woman disappeared down the end of the hallway, just as the door to the Merling Queen’s bedchambers finally opened.

Merebeth took a deep breath, and glanced up sharply at her, reminding herself who she was and forcing a rather tremulous smile.

“Merebeth,” the Merling Queen said, squinting down at her from behind the only halfway shut door. She looked strange, without the veil and without any rogue on her face. Almost…plain, and it felt rather strange to see that, in a woman so beloved by all of Braavos. “I didn’t expect to see you again, tonight.”

Her tone dripped with disapproval that Merebeth should be up so late at all, let alone trying to wake her, and Merebeth bit the inside of her cheek while she tried to figure out how she wanted to respond.

Because whether or not she made it through the Merling Queen’s door into her bedchambers entirely depended on what she was about to say next, and she needed to make it into the Merling Queen’s bedchambers in order to make this work.

She had her mission.

Merebeth worried her lower lip. “I…can we…talk again, my lady?” She asked, doing her best to let her voice wobble as she spoke.

The Merling Queen squinted at her, and then glanced out in the hallway behind her. Clearly, now that she was awake, she had dismissed Merebeth as a threat.

Merebeth bit the inside of her cheek. “I…I wanted to apologize,” she said, gritting her teeth because no matter what the Kindly Man wanted of her, she was not as good of an actress as she wanted to be, and that would always be clear enough.

But she could at least make a paltry effort, and it bothered her, how much her thoughts focused on Sansa these days, in order to make that effort.

The Merling Queen eyed her for a moment longer, and then shrugged, opening the door just enough to allow Merebeth to enter, and the girl did, slightly hesitantly, because she knew that if she was anything but, the Merling Queen would be suspicious as to why she was really there.

The parlor room was beautiful, made of all marble and gold, even for one of the rooms in the Merling Queen’s manse. Giant, for only one woman, for the Merling Queen never brought her conquests back to her manse. She preferred the air of mystery that gave her, for her to only go to them, and them never to know more than they had to about her.

Merebeth had once heard her say that she preferred it, as well.

She licked her lips, locking her fingers together and then unlocking them, because she was nervous about this, she could admit that, in the privacy of her own mind where the Kindly Man could not entirely control her thoughts, where there was still some hint of the girl that she had left behind in order to come here in the first place.

Behind her, she heard the Merling Queen let out a long sigh, and she bit the inside of her cheek as she turned around to face the other woman, because she could put this off no longer.

The Waif had been clear about that, and a girl was not going to let the Waif win against her yet again.

“What is it you want to say, Merebeth?” The Merling Queen finally demanded, looking exhausted, and Merebeth supposed that it was rather late. Which was good; besides the one she had seen in the hallway and the guards outside the manse who would not realize that the threat was coming from within, not without at all, most of the servants would be asleep by now, in any case.

She swallowed hard.

“The truth is,” Merebeth began, biting her lip, thinking of the way that she had flinched away from that sellsword and caused such a scene, “the truth is, I was so scared to be touched by that man because…well, because…”

She looked away, because she had known from the moment the Merling Queen had confided that story in her, hours ago, that she was going to use it to this purpose, and still, she felt a bit ill, using it at all.

But she had her orders, and she knew that it would be for the best for her to use all of the resources at her disposal, in order to complete it.

It was what she had been taught, in the House of Black and White. And it was the only way that she would ever be able to finish off a girl’s list, one day.

“Yes?” The Merling Queen asked, and her voice was gentle, now, in a way that Merebeth didn’t deserve and that a girl certainly didn’t, but clearly, the Merling Queen could see something of her nervousness, and had not guessed its cause.

If she had, after all, she wouldn’t sound quite so gentle at all.

Merebeth glanced down at her hands, twisting them awkwardly around each other, trying not to meet the other woman’s eyes.

Because she knew that the Merling Queen would be able to read the truth in them.

“Here, sit down,” the Merling Queen said then, giving her a gentle smile as she gestured to the divan in the middle of the parlor.

Merebeth took a deep breath, taking the gesture with relief and staring down at the beautiful purple fabric instead of at the Merling Queen.

“I…” Merebeth licked her lips, trying hard to get her thoughts together, to rethink the childhood she had thought so hard of, when she had first come to this place, knowing full well that she might find herself questioned for it.

“My stepmother,” she said, closing her eyes and thinking of blonde hair and piercing green eyes, as she had from the moment she had resolved to be hated by Merebeth’s stepmother and hate her in turn, “when I was younger, she would…she would send me to the taverns, to make trade with them when my father could not turn a proper profit.”

She thought that the Merling Queen knew of her hatred for her stepmother by now; for all that Merebeth was a quiet little thing, she had not failed to make it known why she was here, to the other mermaids, and after all, the Merling Queen dealt in secrets.

If she did not know the secrets of her own mermaids, then what was the point of her, in any case.

Merebeth bit back something of a hysterical laugh at the thought, as she wondered what the Merling Queen might think of her own secrets.

She still didn’t dare look at the Merling Queen now, though she could see that the Merling Queen was a little confused, now.

“They’re willing to buy it for higher prices,” Merebeth continued, not sure if it was because her story needed to make sense to herself or to the Merling Queen. So long as she could distract the Merling Queen long enough, she knew, it wouldn’t matter if the Merling Queen saw the holes in her story, later.

“I see,” the Merling Queen said, but her voice was gentle.

Merebeth swallowed hard, because she sounded sympathetic, but that wasn’t quite where Merebeth needed her to be, if she was to do this correctly, when the Merling Queen was larger than her and she had only the one weapon with which to kill her.

Oh, she didn’t doubt that she could kill her, but still, she worried.

Merebeth let her voice shake a little, as she continued, her voice slow. “One day, when my father was very deep in his debts and saw no way out,” and she winced a little, because a proper young girl would never want to admit that her father had debts to begin with, not to a stranger, “My stepmother…sent me to the taverns. But this time, she had nothing to trade.”

When she glanced at her out of the corner of her vision, Merebeth saw that the Merling Queen was wincing, as if she had already guessed what had happened.

Or, what Merebeth was about to say had happened.

She supposed it was a rather predictable story, all things told.

“I didn’t understand, at the time,” Merebeth said, thinking of an axe raised above the steps of the Sept of Baelor, and shaking her head. That wasn’t what she was supposed to think of. A tavern, full of men. “What I was supposed to do, when I got there, when I had nothing to sell. I didn’t understand at all.”

The Merling Queen let out a long sigh.

“I am sorry that happened to you,” the Merling Queen said, wrapping her arm around Merebeth’s shoulder and pulling her flush against her.

Merebeth tensed, at the touch.

The Merling Queen leaned down then, laying her head down on Merebeth’s, and Merebeth tensed still further.

“You don’t have to explain anything more,” the Merling Queen whispered, lips brushing into her hair. “If you don’t want to.”

But Merebeth swallowed, because she knew that if she stopped now, the Merling Queen would not feel vulnerable.

She had told Merebeth to stop because she knew she was about to feel vulnerable, with Merebeth’s next words.

“When I got there,” Merebeth continued, swallowing again, and now her voice was shaking for another reason altogether, “the men at the tavern, they knew.”

The Merling Queen opened and closed her mouth, and was silent.

Merebeth licked her lips. “They knew, and they hurt me,” she whispered, because she couldn’t dare say the words any louder. “Hurt me, again and again, and I…”

The Merling Queen’s arm started to move away from her, as she full body flinched, and that was when a girl made her move.

Because the Merling Queen was distracted; Merebeth had guessed right, it seemed, that she was still so vulnerable about all of this, and she knew exactly what it was that she had to do.

She pounced, glittering green eyes still in the back of her mind as she made her move. As she turned far too quickly, and shoved the other woman down onto the divan, as she heard the wind knocked out of the Merling Queen’s chest before she could cry out for help.

And then she reached into the pocket of the gown that Merebeth had been wearing to sleep, had sewn a pocket into herself, rather absurdly relieved, in that moment, that their septa back in Winterfell had been so intent about making her do so.

The Merling Queen’s eyes went very wide when she saw the knife slip into Merebeth’s hands, and then she was holding up her own, first trying to ward off Merebeth, and then holding them up in a placating manner.

“W-wait, please,” the Merling Queen murmured, and Merebeth lifted her head from the knife, from the spot on the Merling Queen’s neck that she was planning to go for, glancing at the other woman blandly.

The Merling Queen swallowed hard. “Please,” she whispered again, and Merebeth could hear the wetness in her voice, and knew that this was bordering on cruelty, her hesitation. She ought to just kill her and be done with it.

But there was a part of her that was still hesitating, despite all of the people that she had killed for the House of Black and White since she’d gotten here, people that she didn’t know deserved it or not, because they weren’t on her list.

But it mattered this time, because even if it had nothing to do with Sansa, everything about this particular mission reminded her of Sansa. She swallowed hard.

She wondered if the Kindly Man, or the Waif, had known that when they had sent her here in the first place.

And then she shook her head, raising the knife again, trying hard to ignore the way that the Merling Queen’s eyes grew wide and she lifted her hands in supplication.

“Please!” The Merling Queen cried out again, her voice raising as she did so, and Merebeth grimaced, glancing over her shoulder toward the closed door.

No one was going to come, of course; she had drugged all of the other girls, tonight, a few drops on their lips of a substance that would make them sleep through the night, even if the Merling Queen did scream.

But a girl had gotten good enough at what she was about to do that she did not expect the Merling Queen to scream at all.

“Please,” the Merling Queen whispered hoarsely again. Her eyes were very wide, but they weren’t filled with fear, the way that Merebeth had expected them to be. They were filled with…something disturbingly like understanding, and Merebeth licked her lips and stopped looking into her eyes at all.

But the Merling Queen was shaking, for all that there was no fear in her eyes.

Merebeth swallowed.

There was no reason for the Merling Queen to remind her of Sansa, no reason at all. Sansa had never been a whore, for all that she had been a child obsessed with a prince who was no good for their family. She had been well loved in Winterfell, but she had never been close to their brothers, and so sometimes it hadn’t felt that way at all.

But everything, the feast aboard that pleasure barge, the dancing with those men who had looked at her like she was their prey, the way that the Merling Queen was staring up at her, in the same way as she had seen the girl who played Sansa in all of those mummer’s plays look up at Tyrion Lannister, and then at the crowd, had Merebeth’s hands shaking.

Or perhaps they were a girl’s hands, and there was no real difference between that girl and Arya Stark.

She swallowed, her throat suddenly very dry.

Because Sansa wasn’t here, she was thousands of leagues away, in King’s Landing, the plaything of at least two Lannisters, because she had chosen to love Joffrey rather than to see his faults, but she had only been a child, then.

The Merling Queen was not Sansa. She was beautiful, yes, as Sansa had been, and plain as she had been, but she had power where Sansa had none.

And if a girl was ever going to make sure that her sister didn’t remain the subject of a mummer’s tale of rape and sadness, Merebeth had to kill the Merling Queen, had to keep killing until she could be sure that everyone on her list was dead.

The Merling Queen’s eyes, when she met them again, weren’t full of fear or anger, but full of a bone deep sense of understanding that made Merebeth shift uncomfortably.

The Merling Queen just kept staring at her, saying nothing.

But there was a part of a girl who feared a sudden, onset of blindness that might not go away this time, that feared one day looking up and seeing Arya Stark’s face on a wall.

The Merling Queen’s smile was thin. “Do you now why we call them mermaids?” She asked, as a girl pressed the sharp end of her knife against the Merling Queen’s throat, where she lay strewn out on the divan below a girl.

She was far too unafraid, and it made Merebeth feel rather terrified, to see that the woman lying below her didn’t look afraid when Merebeth was the one about to kill her.

And still, Merebeth’s mouth went dry at the sight of her, looking up at Merebeth like that.

She didn’t speak, just cocked her head at the other woman, still disturbed by the fact hat she was taking so long to murder the other woman and yet the Merling Queen had not once cried out over it, had not tried to call for help, had barely tried to get away from her.

The Merling Queen was not much older than Sansa, a girl thought. Perhaps that was why she kept reminding her of Sansa, even though there was no reason that she ought to, because nothing else about her was remotely similar to Sansa, save for the look on her face as she lay beneath Arya right now, and the look on that mummer girl’s face at the same time in the play.

The Merling Queen lifted up, the soft flesh of her neck pressing into the knife that a girl was holding at her throat.

“Because in the end, they all wish that they could swim away from this place, but they’re all still girls stuck here, anyway,” she whispered, and there was pain in her voice, but a girl didn’t know if it was because of her memories of being a mermaid, or the slow trickle of blood making its way down her neck and staining her nightgown.

Merebeth pushed the knife down further, because this woman reminded her too much of Sansa, but she was doing this, all of this, to get back to Sansa, even if she had betrayed their family by remaining at Joffrey’s side, to get back to Winterfell and Jon, if he was even still alive.

The gods knew that the rest of them were not.

And they would not be able to be free with one another, to all go home again, until everyone on her list was gone.

Arya Stark just wanted to go home, and a girl knew that would never happen unless the world had been cleansed of those who had stolen her home and her family away in the first place.

The sight of the Merling Queen, bleeding out in front of her, was mesmerizing, made perhaps all the more so by the fact that she did not try to fight back, the whole time. Barely even flinched, never once cried out.

Simply laid there and took it, as a girl cut her open in a particularly brutal fashion, because she had thought of Cersei Lannister’s calculating green eyes when she had made up that story about her stepmother, because this woman had dared to remind her far too much of Sansa, and she just wanted to be able to go home again, and killing this woman was yet another step in getting there.

She hadn’t even meant to cut her open quite that brutally, and she knew what the Kindly Man would think of it, that he would know, as he had no doubt already known when he had given her this assignment in the first place, that she had let her emotions get the better of her when she was not supposed to. She was here to learn from this woman, to become her, if she could, though a girl could not see how she might have done so, in such a short time. And she was supposed to learn that the kill should mean next to nothing to her.

And yet, this particular one had. Had, because she awoke something in a girl, something that didn't belong to No One, something that made her feel far too guilty, for what she had just done, something that had wanted to punish the Merling Queen for that guilt.

By the time she was done, the Merling Queen was no longer on the divan, but on the floor, and they were both covered in blood, and a girl was panting tiredly.

It took several moments for her to come back to herself at all, but when she did again, she felt far too warm.

And the Merling Queen was laying beneath her, nightgown strewn awkwardly around her body, dead to this world.

Curious despite herself, Merebeth tilted back the Merling Queen’s face. Her face, up close, was older than Merebeth might have pictured her. Filled with tiny wrinkles and lines, though there was no gray in her very dark hair.

The face behind the Merling Queen, one of amongst several, from what Merebeth understood of the Merling Queen’s past in Braavos, and now, she was dead.

She was…beautiful, but rather plain, Merebeth couldn’t help but think. Certainly not worth the trouble that all of the men of Braavos seemed to go to over her.

But then, it was not as if Merebeth would know much about that, on her own.

She was No One, and now, neither was the Merling Queen.

Strange, how in death, when a girl had not touched her face, she somehow looked far more at peace than she had in the short time a girl had known her while she lived.

* * *

It didn’t matter how many times a girl walked through the doors of the House of Black and White, how many times she saw the faces in the walls, this place still disturbed a girl.

The bone deep chill, even though Braavos was never what she could describe as cold, after growing up in Winterfell, the tall columns and hard stone, it all disturbed her in a way that she could never quite put a word to.

If she were still not No One, she might have even said that it scared her.

She took a deep breath, stepping further inside the House of Black and White, past the pool where the sick came to die or to make their demands of the Many Faced God in the vain hope that he might grant their last requests, past the hall of faces, until she found herself standing before the Dead.

Before the Kindly Man, who was watching in silence as the Waif worked on one of those bodies.

He did not look up, when a girl entered the room.

After all, she was No One.

She had finally learned that when she had lost the use of her eyes.

She watched in silence, where she came to stand beside the Kindly Man, as the Waif worked, cleaning the body, preparing it.

Soon enough, she would take its face, as well.

The face belonged to a withered old man, with dark skin and laughter lines that a girl suspected she would never have, when she grew old.

And then the body was finished, and the Waif glanced up and smirked at a girl, looking right at her.

If it had been several months ago, a girl might have flinched, from the look on her features.

And then the Kindly Man turned to look at her, as well, his eyes very hard in a way that she had not come to suspect from him, though they had looked more that way when he had been what he thought was nothing more than an assassin, in Westeros.

He made a soft sound, and a girl crumpled.

He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her flush against her, and a girl grimaced, taking a deep, shuddering breath, in and out. She bit the inside of her cheek, resting it against the Kindly Man’s shoulder as she closed her eyes.

For a moment, she allowed herself to bury her face in his shoulder and pretend that it belonged to a father she had long ago lost, rather than the Kindly Man, who had never been a father to her.

When she breathed him in, for a moment, he even smelled like her father, and a girl felt tears pricking at her eyes.

For a moment, she could forget what she had just done, could pretend that everything horrible that had happened the last several years hadn’t happened at all, that she was a girl back in Winterfell, before Robert Baratheon had ever come into their lives, and that she could see her family again, the moment she opened her eyes once more.

And then he reared back, slapping her hard across the face, so hard that it nearly knocked her off her feet.

Arya reared back, her eyes very wide as she lifted a cheek to her burning cheek, staring at the other man incredulously, because the movement had been so unexpected, so shocking.

“You are not a girl, anymore,” the Kindly Man snapped, and his voice was as hard and as cold as it had ever been with her. “You should not be reacting like one.”

Arya glared at him. “I killed her, didn’t I?” She demanded, eyes wet despite herself, because she’d done what he wanted.

He had no right to treat her like this.

He slapped her, again, and Arya was just as unprepared for it that time as she had been the first time.

He’d never raised a hand to her, in the past. Had never specifically been Kind, of course, but he had never hurt her like this, because she was…useful to him, and she didn’t know why he was acting like this just now, but she had a terrible feeling, coiling in the bottom of her gut.

“No One killed her,” the Kindly Man informed her, coldly, before taking a step back from her. “And that is all that shall ever be known of it. Now. Go back to your room, and be ready.”

“Ready?” Arya echoed. “For what?”

The Kindly Man smiled.

She should have known that he wasn’t going to give her that, after all of this time together.

She sagged a little, as he turned and disappeared into the darkness of the House of Black and White, and she was left alone with the Waif, who was still staring at her.

“What?” She demanded, and the Waif’s lips thinned.

“You ought to be more grateful,” she muttered. “The Many Faced God wanted her dead, and you followed His will, but not well. A Man could have been much angrier.”

A girl shook her head. “I did what he wanted,” she breathed, because the world had been darkness when she was blind, and she had thought she had learned her lesson from that, once.

But the moment she had looked down at the Merling Queen and saw Sansa Stark instead, all of that, all of it, had been lost. She gritted her teeth, because the last thing she wanted to think about right now was that.

She had done what they had wanted, and she wanted something in return, for the toll it had unexpectedly taken on her.

“Why does the Many Faced God demand that you don’t take responsibility for the kills?” Arya asked, curious despite herself.

The Waif eyed her. “It’s not as if you care,” she muttered, and Arya lifted an eyebrow.

“You think I don’t?” She asked, because it was not as if the Waif was any better at hiding her emotions than a girl was.

And then, the dots connected in her mind, as she stared at the Waif’s self-satisfied smirk where she stood over the body of a dead man.

“You did this,” she breathed, and dear gods, she should have known that the Waif had pulled something like this, that she had done this on purpose in order to punish Arya for being better at all of this than she was, for being the one that the Kindly Man was so interested in while she was simply the other, the lesser, of the two of them.

The Waif stared at her for a moment, and then her childlike lips pulled into a wide grin. “Of course I did,” she muttered, and a girl’s stomach sank, the anger that the Kindly Man had displayed - if it could be called anger - making a bit more sense, now.

She was lucky that he hadn’t taken away her sight again, like he did before, because she supposed that in this case, she hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d killed the target that the Kindly Man had wanted her to, and she’d done it because she’d thought she had her orders, not because she had any personal stake in the matter.

“You did this,” a girl whispered again, horror rushing through her, because her mission had been to learn from the Merling Queen, not to kill her, and it had only been as she had been killing the other woman that she realized why she reminded her so damn much of Sansa, that she had ripped open all of those wounds again.

And the Waif had done that.

A girl’s hands clenched into fists, at her sides. She suddenly wanted nothing more than to see the Waif punished for it, the way that she had been punished when the Kindly Man had taken away her eyes.

The Waif grinned, and a girl suddenly found herself wishing that she couldn’t see that damnable smirk, at all.

The Waif leaned forward, still smirking as she whispered into the darkness, the great echo of the room they were in, “Well, I had to make sure you didn’t win, didn’t I? He’s never going to pick you over me as the best of us, now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think!


	4. The Queen is Dead. Long live the Queen.

The tale of the Merling Queen’s death was a…disturbing one, and one which would no doubt haunt Braavos for years to come, for it seemed there was not a single lead in discovering the identity of her killer.

She was a beloved courtesan in Braavos, so beloved that even Tyrion had heard of her position, if not this particular girl, long before he had ever arrived here, knew about it from his Uncle Gerion, though he doubted the man had ever known her back then either, and now she was dead.

The Sealord had had to go out and calm some of the other prominent courtesans in Braavos, though the man hardly had that job, because they were starting to wonder if there would be other courtesans killed, next, by some fanatic, the way that King’s Landing was rumored to have been nearly purged by religious fanatics.

Tyrion almost sympathized.

Braavos, however, held a day of mourning for their beloved courtesan, and the Sealord in particular had held a mourning feast for her, toasting her a little too long until his wife got up and left the room.

It haunted Tyrion enough, and he had only known the woman for three nights, at the most, even if she had struck him as rather…strange, even for a courtesan with an inflated sense of self-importance.

She had been slit open from throat to cunt, Tyrion had heard, her body pouring out blood and her intestines when one of her young “apprentices” had found her, early in the morning.

It had been a horrifying image, and he had not even found the body. The girls who made up the Merling Queen’s mermaids were all children, as Bronn had intimated to him and as Tyrion had suspected. He couldn’t imagine them waking up to find their lady like that, even if she hadn’t been kind to them.

But the most annoying thing about all of this, was that the death of the Merling Queen was yet another reason for the Sealord to put off giving Tyrion his introduction to the Iron Bank. The tragedy of the situation was simply a matter that would take all of his attention, and therefore he couldn’t deal with Tyrion’s request, at the moment.

Tyrion sighed, glancing over at Shae where she lay on the bed beside him, because just days ago, he had been thinking about how Shae’s life might have been better, had she been born in Braavos instead of Lorath, had she found someone willing to mentor her, eve if it was as a courtesan, when she was younger.

Of course, he’d never have met her, in that case.

He swallowed hard, a part of him wondering if that wouldn’t in fact be better.

Dear gods.

He swept a hand over his mouth and chin, because Shae was pregnant.

Shae was pregnant with his child, because even if he didn’t trust her, he knew that she couldn’t have possibly gotten away with sleeping with another man with Cersei and before her, Tywin, watching her so closely, waiting for their moment to sweep in and take her away from Tyrion.

But a part of him wished that she had, because it would be far easier, just now, to think about raising another man’s child than to live with the knowledge that if she went through with any such pregnancy, with keeping Tyrion’s child, she might not survive the experience.

And of course that was her decision to make, but…

But, if Tyrion had to make that decision, he would choose her, he knew that, even if it hadn’t come as some great revelation, some shock, like the pregnancy had been.

Tyrion had never imagined himself as a father. His father had been horrible enough, had left a lasting impression that Tyrion knew he would never be able to shake.

He only had to look at the way he had fucked things up with Sansa so many times in order to see that.

Tyrion sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose as he got out of his bed and walked over to the clothes he had draped over the side of the bed the night before.

He sighed, pulling the shirt over his head and taking a deep breath. It had been several days since the Merling Queen’s death, and he was going to make his request of the Sealord again today, because damn it, he understood that the man was frightened by the Iron Bank, but Tyrion was rather frightened for his family.

And that was a more pressing concern than a death that had already occurred.

Somehow, finally, the Sealord had managed to gain him an audience, and Tyrion was not about to waste it.

He took a deep breath, glancing over at Shae where she lay sleeping on the bed one more time, and then walked out of the chambers that they were sharing together in the Sealord’s palace, and out into the hallway, where Pod was leaning against the wall, looking supremely bored.

“Bronn didn’t come back last night, I take it,” Tyrion quipped, and Pod, who had been the envy of half the men in King’s Landing, blushed a little, at his words.

Tyrion snorted, and kept walking, until he found the Sealord waiting in one of his rather extravagant parlors.

The man smiled at him, standing and holding out his arms as if he wanted to embrace Tyrion, and it took every bit of the political acumen Tyrion had accumulated over the years not to roll his eyes at the other man.

He was rather heavy-handed with his politics, after all, though Tyrion doubted the people of Braavos would think as much. He tended to be one of those Sealord’s who didn’t do much of anything save for throwing parties and lowering taxes, and the people seemed to like him well enough, for that.

A pity that Joffrey couldn’t be the same.

Tyrion’s lips twitched a little, at the thought.

“So,” the Sealord said, as his wife got up from where she sat across from her husband and made her way out of the room without once glancing in Tyrion’s direction, “Today’s the big day, eh?”

Tyrion did roll his eyes, at that. “Assuming that they listen to my proposal.”

The Sealord reached out, patting him on the shoulder. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, my friend. I wouldn’t worry about that. The Iron Bank can be surprisingly reasonable, from time to time.”

“Well,” Tyrion said, smiling slightly, “they did elect you, after all.”

The Sealord’s face flushed. “Well, not only the key holders of the Iron Bank are in charge of electing the Sealord, my friend,” he said. “There are many prominent nobles in Braavos in charge of such things.”

Tyrion didn’t bother to collect him. Even a Westerosi knew where all of the power in Braavos truly lay.

“Tell me,” he said, eying the other man carefully, “You spoke with them, to get me this audience. Do you really think that I have a chance?”

The Sealord raised an eyebrow, and then shrugged a little. “I think that their representative will listen to what you have to say, Lord Hand,” he said, rather more formally than how he normally spoke, and that certainly didn’t make Tyrion feel wonderful about the situation. Then, the older man smiled. “Besides, you are rather charming.”

Tyrion didn’t think he’d ever been referred to as charming.

But then the Sealord was moving towards the door, as if he didn’t quite want to meet Tyrion’s eyes. Tyrion had assumed that his strange behavior, bouncing around far too much for his old age, could be attributed to the fact that he was nervous around the Lord Hand of Westeros, or speaking of the Iron Bank, but now, Tyrion wondered if there wasn’t some other motivation behind it, for all that it had never ceased in the short time the two of them had come to know one another.

And then they were walking out of the Sealord’s parlor, passing the guards that Tyrion had passed to enter it in the first place, the Sealord chatting along all the way out the doors and to the four guards and the litter that he gestured for Tyrion to enter.

And then the Sealord was waving him off, and Tyrion grimaced a little, because he hadn’t realized that the Sealord wasn’t going to go with him to the Iron Bank.

He sank back into the litter, and decided that it didn’t matter, because either way, he was rather screwed. This was a last resort, after all.

* * *

“Take a seat, Lord Tyrion,” the man said, and Tyrion grimaced, feeling oddly like a child brought to task before one of his maesters.

Or rather, before his father, though this envoy was hardly as intimidating as his father. Well, perhaps not as a person, but rather because of the institution that he represented.

Tyrion knew damn well that there were few people, if any at all, that Tywin Lannister had ever feared, and yet, he feared the Iron Bank. Tyrion vaguely remembered his father once calling it the most powerful institution in the world, which was why he was so furious that the Crown was blatantly ignoring its debts to the Bank in order to borrow more and more from the Tyrells, whom he had never trusted in the first place.

Tyrion wondered what it was saying about him now, that he was here to ask the Iron Bank to back whomever House Tyrell eventually chose.

He just prayed to the gods that they weren’t going to find themselves beholden to Stannis Baratheon, some time soon, though he rather doubted that Olenna would allow that to happen to her House.

Still, it was disconcerting, this knowledge that Olenna had no doubt lied to his face when she’d agreed that House Tyrell would back Tommen’s claim to the Iron Throne, the moment that Joffrey was dead, when he didn’t know what her backup plan would be.

Of course, she could actually be trying to back Tommen, the moment that Joffrey was dead, so long as none of the Lannisters, including the ones still living, were able to keep control of the boy, either.

Tyrion gritted his teeth at the thought, reminded himself that at the very least, Tommen would still be alive, with their little plan here. It was not as if Olenna would be inclined to let Myrcella and Jaime live, otherwise, if she did not have to.

“Ah,” Tyrion cleared his throat, because Tycho was staring at him with that impenetrable gaze. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me so early. I understand that these things are not necessarily so quick, generally.”

“We are greatly honored to have the infamous Hand of King Joffrey visiting us,” the banker said, giving him a look as if he knew every single one of the rumors said about Tyrion in particular.

Tyrion had no doubt that he did; the Iron Bank had to be meticulous in its research, to decide which lords to back and which ones to leave out to dry. They worked in secrets and blackmail as much as they did persuading their patrons to pay their damn debts.

And he very much doubted that this particular envoy was happy to see someone representing House Lannister, not after what he had learned Cersei did, from Uncle Kevan.

He didn’t know whether he’d still been in the Black Cells at that time, or merely hadn’t been the Hand, but Tyrion had not been happy to learn how Cersei had all but expelled the envoy from King’s Landing, telling him in slightly more polite terms to go fuck himself, after he’d asked about House Lannister repaying their debts to the Crown.

It was a good thing, Tyrion supposed, that he was not here on behalf of House Lannister. But they both knew that, he and Olenna, that he would not even have gotten inside of the door were he to admit that he was here on behalf of House Tyrell.

“I’m sure that you are,” Tyrion muttered, sinking into the seat in front of Tycho’s desk. He grimaced, straightening up as tall as he could manage in the seat, and Tycho smirked a little, though the smile faded the moment he noticed Tyrion looking.

Tyrion sighed, glancing around the room. The very bland, empty room, besides the desk that they were both sitting at, and Tyrion rather doubted that this was Tycho’s particular office.

The Sealord had finally gotten him an appointment with an envoy of the Iron Bank, though of course he was shunted off into a little office like this one, the moment he was invited within the building which loomed over half of Braavos.

And shown to Tycho Nestoris, who might not have been the one to see Cersei in King’s Landing, but had been in charge of that envoy, from what Tyrion understood of the matter.

He had a bad feeling about this.

“Oh, I did not mean to insult you, my lord,” the banker said, idly, picking up a quill and playing with it between his fingers. Tyrion doubted the man had developed any sort of nervous habits, however, as a banker with such power. “I’m sure you’ve gotten enough of that, since arriving in Braavos.”

Tyrion gritted his teeth. “Of course,” he muttered, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

“You must understand our hesitancy, however,’ the man said, and Tyrion raised an eyebrow at him.

The man grimaced, looking like he was almost hesitant to bring up the matter, but Tyrion could see the shrewdness in his eyes, could see that he was probably even enjoying this.

“The last time that I was in Westeros, your dear sister the Queen Mother explained to me in no uncertain terms that the Iron bank would receive no returns on our many loans to your kingdom until the war had been won,” Tycho explained calmly. “So you can see why we are hesitant to take on more loans, especially at a time when your own loyal Houses are turning against you in favor Stannis Baratheon.”

Tyrion grimaced. “You must understand,” he said slowly, “My sister was…overcome with her grief, so soon after the death of our father, as I assume that is when you approached her. And as Hand of the King, I understand the issue a bit better.”

“And have less grief for your father,” Tycho said, eying him long and hard, and Tyrion merely shrugged, not bothering to deny it.

Tycho hummed. “After your sister’s rather abrupt refusal to pay on your family’s myriad loans, we were…approached by another interested party,” he went on, and Tyrion stiffened, at those words.

Because of course that made sense. Of course the Iron Bank was funding Stannis Baratheon, in this war. That explained how he had so easily won back Winterfell, how he had then had the gall to turn his attention on Casterly Rock.

“And from what I hear of it, Lord Stannis has been…fairly successful, so far, even in rousing House Lannister’s own Seat in the Westerlands.”

Tyrion gritted his teeth. “Only because he has the support of the Iron Bank.”

This time, it was Tycho’s turn to shrug. “I suppose,” he acknowledged. “Though it might be because he is simply a better king than the child who rules from the Iron Throne. Perhaps…” he trailed off for a moment, his eyes amused. “Perhaps he is merely a more sound investment. I understand that the King’s wife’s family is quite…grief-stricken, after the loss of their daughter.”

Tyrion gritted his teeth again, because while yes, he had been able to see their grief from his brief time in Highgarden, he could already tell that this man liked to play with his words, and that he was talking about the knowledge that House Tyrell had declared war on House Lannister, had accused them of everything from placing a bastard on the throne to killing the late Queen Margaery and her two brothers.

And he had a feeling that it was going to be rather difficult, with the Bank knowing that, for Tyrion to be able to argue that the Iron Bank might do what they ask.

“I have been in Braavos for several weeks already, trying to secure my family’s future,” he said, calmly. “The Iron Bank, I have found, has forbidden all other lending houses from dealing with House Lannister, or frightened them away from it. But you must see that Stannis Baratheon is hardly a sound investment, just because he’s won a few wars. Have you met the man?”

The man’s smile was thin. “Unlike House Lannister, the Iron Bank is known for seeing its debts paid, and its word honored. Lord Stannis has agreed to pay the debts owed to the Iron Bank by the Crown. All of them, including those belonging to your own rather…indebted family.”

“With what money?” Tyrion asked, when the man had finished his little spiel, leaning forward in his chair.

Tycho sat back in his own. “With the funds that he will become exposed to, once he has won the war against Joffrey the Illborn.”

Ah.

“But he still has to win the war, the same predicament that my sister, for all that she is not well accustomed to dealing with monetary issues for the Crown, presented to you,” Tyrion pointed out.

Tycho shrugged. “We have operated on good faith with your family for many years, Lord Tyrion,” he pointed out. “Lord Stannis is known for fulfilling his word.”

Tyrion eyed him, not believing that the man was as determined to follow Stannis as he claimed. “And you want to ensure that your investments will pay off.”

Tycho smirked at him. “Of course I do. It is only sound practice, for a bank.”

Tyrion sighed, leaning back in his chair, pretending to appear more conflicted than he certainly had felt, ever since Olenna Tyrell had presented this plan to him.

"The Iron Bank does not seek to make slaves of the Westerosi," the banker pointed out dryly, when Tyrion took too long to respond. "We here in Braavos do not condone that. We merely wish to have returned what is ours."

Tyrion grimaced. "And Westeros is perfectly happy to make arrangements with you-"

"When?" the banker interrupted. "For all we have seen, Westeros is perfectly happy to postpone the making of any such arrangements for all of eternity, if you can manage it."

Tyrion gritted his teeth. "The Iron Bank has done little for House Lannister in recent years-"

"Let me make this simple," the banker interrupted, and Tyrion had to work hard not to grind through his jaw. "Stannis Baratheon has been receiving gold from the Iron Bank for some months now."

Tyrion fell silent. He had suspected that, of course; Stannis suddenly had the manpower to take Winterfell, and that hadn't made sense to him, not from the moment he'd heard it. Not after hearing all about how Stannis was wandering about in the wilderness, his men dying of the cold.

But he damn well knew that the Iron Bank had only gone to Stannis after Cersei had refused their envoy’s request to pay the Crown’s debts when Tywin died, claiming that the Crown could only pay their debts after the rebellion was over, which had been a rather stupid mistake even if they didn’t have the money at the time.

And now, it seemed, Stannis was not paying his debts as quickly as they had hoped.

Tyrion wanted to be amused by that.

"And he has profited greatly from it," the banker continued. "But the Iron Bank grows...concerned that he will not be able to pay those debts soon enough. War is such a...costly business, Lord Hand."

Tyrion pinched the bridge of his nose. "And you want House Lannister to pay his debts as well as our own," he surmised. “Now that we have little choice in the matter, with you taking away our one chance to get a new loan and save our side of this war.”

When he looked up again, the banker was smiling. "I knew there was a reason you were once named Master of Coins in King's Landing," he said.

Tyrion grunted. "That," he said tightly, "was an insult."

The banker leaned forward in his chair, eyes hard. "Yes," he agreed. "It was.”

Tyrion sank back into his chair a little bit. “Well?” He demanded. “I don’t suppose that I might have your answer today.”

Tycho’s lips twitched into a smirk. “Not today, no.”

Tyrion eyed him for a moment longer, and then hummed. “And what if the proposition that I came before you today has little enough to do with House Lannister, and might get you your money much earlier than the end of a war which could very well drag on for many years?” He asked, and Tycho blinked at him.

This time, it was the banker who leaned forward in his chair. “I’m listening,” he murmured, and inwardly, Tyrion smirked.

“As you’ve already mentioned, House Tyrell, once our strongest supporter, is now in open rebellion against the Crown,” he said, and Tycho blinked at him, nodding for him to continue. “I want you to transfer House Lannister’s debts to them.”

Tycho leaned back in his chair, blinking at Tyrion in some confusion, now. “You want me to sell House Lannister’s debts to House Tyrell?” He repeated incredulously. “Lord Tyrion, perhaps you are not as good at this banking as you seem to think, or as your sister. If I were to do that…”

“Then House Tyrell would control the debts of House Lannister,” Tyrion interrupted him, nodding. “And they would be able to call for House Lannister to answer those debts at any time that they wished.”

Tycho went a bit pale. “You are not here to ask the Iron Bank to stand behind House Lannister,” he said, slowly, still looking like he was considering the offer, at least.

Tyrion dipped his head. “I think that we both know you’re not going to fund House Lannister again,” he said. “But I think that you, like I, would like to see a speedy end to this war, so that your money might be returned. Stannis Baratheon might have a good mind for strategy, but there is no guarantee that this war won’t drag on forever, now that my brother leads the charge against him.”

“Your brother, who lost his first battle to a child,” Tycho pointed out, sounding less than impressed.

Tyrion gritted his teeth. “My brother, who murdered the previous king,” he pointed out.

Tycho swallowed. “And House Tyrell…they have the funds, to buy these…rather substantial debts from us?” He asked.

Tyrion dipped his head. “I have been assured that they do, by the Lady Olenna Tyrell,” he agreed, and Tycho, if possible, looked almost paler still.

“But this is not in the interest of an end to the fighting, a sense of altruism, I believe,” he said, eyes narrowing at Tyrion. “You must see that. So why are you here, advocating on their behalf?”

Tyrion smirked. “Like I said,” he said, slowly now, “My brother killed the last Mad King. And as you said, the Iron Bank should only be funding sound investments, these days.”

Tycho gritted his teeth. “And if House Tyrell were to buy these debts from us, were to pay them off for us,” he said calmly, “then what is their plan?”

Tyrion smiled slightly. “Well, Mace Tyrell won’t be sitting on the Iron Throne in name. That honor will belong to my nephew, Tommen Baratheon.”

Tycho stared at him for a moment longer, and then leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands in front of him on the desk. “You realize that he is just a child.”

“Yes,” Tyrion said. “But without my sister’s involvement, he will be surrounded by counselors who will guide him to make the right decisions for Westeros.”

Tycho licked his lips. For all that he was trying to pretend that he wasn’t, Tyrion could tell that he was intrigued by Tyrion’s proposal.

“You understand, though,” he said, eying Tyrion with a knowing look, “How it would look, for the Iron Bank to support one member of a famous House in the knowing destruction of another.”

“Which is why you are not supporting me, or Tommen,” Tyrion said. “You are merely ensuring that House Lannister’s debts - all of them - are sold to the Tyrells.”

Tycho raised an eyebrow. “That is…all you are asking of me?” He repeated, looking incredulous now.

Tyrion dipped his head. “Yes,” he said, because he knew damn well that the Iron Bank might happily agree to no longer fund Stannis to Tyrion’s face, but no doubt he would turn around and continue funding Stannis, anyway.

Because bankers were the best gamblers Tyrion knew, and they weren’t about to stop funding Stannis if they thought that the Tyrells were not the best option at the time.

Tycho raised an eyebrow, leaning back a bit more in his chair. “And I don’t suppose that, once the Tyrells have managed to take control of the Crown, they will still have the…monetary ability to pay for any…other debts that have been contracted by those claiming to be in the service of the Crown.”

Ah. So the Iron Bank wanted to make sure that they profited either way. If Stannis won, he would pay the debts to the Crown, and if the Tyrells actually managed to defeat the Lannisters, they would take on Stannis’ debts as well.

And they were rich enough that the Iron Bank ought to believe they would pay it, on their end.

Tyrion gritted his teeth. “You have a deal, on our end,” he said, and Tycho eyed him for several moments longer.

“Our end,” he echoed, looking Tyrion over, no doubt searching for any sign of weakness in his guise.

Tyrion nodded.

Tycho stood to his feet then, and Tyrion took the cue to stand, as well. “You will have an answer from our key holders by the end of the week, Lord Tyrion,” he said, and Tyrion bit back a sigh, because he knew that asking for them to be a little faster was like asking time to go faster than it would.

No one could persuade the Iron Bank to do anything that they did not wish to, after all.

Tyrion sent Tycho a smile that he suspected may be something more of a grimace, and the man gestured toward the door.

Yes, rather like a maester dismissing an unpromising student, he thought with a sigh, walking out of the door and listening to it shut behind him.

He sighed again, the moment that the door shut behind him.

Well, Tyrion thought, that hadn’t gone as badly as he’d expected it to go, but at the same time, Tycho had also left him standing out here, rather than escorting him back out of the Iron Bank.

Even if the fact that he was not getting an escort out of the Iron Bank made him rather nervous about Tycho’s belief that he could convince the key holders to do as Tyrion had suggested.

And then, just as he rounded the corner, Tyrion found himself freezing up at the sight of two men standing in the middle of the corridor, speaking in hushed tones.

Ordinarily, he would have kept walking, because it wasn’t as if he cared what the others coming to the Iron Bank to beg for a loan might like, unless one of them happened to be his sister or Stannis Baratheon, but something caught Tyrion’s eye.

Perhaps it was the shock of red hair, when he glanced in their direction.

Now, Tyrion might have only been a child at the time, but he’d been a rather voracious reader, in his youth.

It was not as if there was much else to do, while trapped away in the Rock, not allowed out to see the world until he was practically an adult. Or until his father had ensured that he became one, in any case.

But he knew enough about Jon Connington to recognize the man’s fiery red hair and fierce blue eyes when he saw them.

Tyrion’s lips twitched as he eyed the other man, who by rights shouldn’t be here. After all, all of Westeros had learned how, after the death of Rhaegar and his rather unremarkable time with the Golden Company, Jon Connington had fucked off to Lys and drank himself to death, there.

There were rumors, though Tyrion’s lord father had never given them any notice, that Connington had loved Rhaegar Targaryen, and been burned by the dragon when he turned his eyes towards Lyanna, rather than his rather lukewarm wife or one of his closest friends.

But here he stood, alive and well, and…standing in the middle of the Iron Bank, where by rights he should not be.

Tyrion cleared his throat, slinking back against the far wall in an effort not to be seen, though of course Tycho knew that he was here.

But it was not Tycho greeting the dead man, but rather, Noho Dimittis, the envoy who had actually seen Cersei, in King’s Landing.

Tyrion gritted his teeth, suddenly having a rather bad feeling about this, even as a part of him wondered if this wasn’t some sort of test, to ascertain his abilities, after the offer that he had just made Tycho.

He wouldn’t put it past the Iron Bank, and yet, at the same time, he couldn’t quite believe that Jon Connington had somehow just escaped death.

He didn’t know why he ought to be surprised, though. It was not as if the flow of information to the Crown was always as honest as it ought to be, but that information, what had become of Jon Connington…that information had come from Lord Varys, reporting it to Robert so that eh could know that all of the lords at large who might attempt to oppose him, standing beside Prince Viserys should the boy ever try to claim his throne, were dead.

Varys, who had stood behind the Iron Throne all through the Mad King’s years, whispering in his ears, through Robert’s, and now through Joffrey’s.

Varys, whom Tyrion had seen as something like a friend during their plots together, but now…but just now, he could not imagine why a man like Varys would want to cover up the fact that a noble as unimportant as Jon Connington was in fact, not dead when he had claimed that he was.

Unless there really was some reason for Jon Connington to be here, and Varys…knew about it, and not only that, approved of it enough to lie about it to the Crown.

Over, and over, and over again, for Robert Baratheon had found it to be the height of irony that a man like Jon Connington had ended up dead in a ditch in Lys somewhere.

Tyrion gritted his teeth, wondering just what the hell Jon Connington was up to that Varys could support, when he had been on the front lines to see what the Mad King had done, all of the horrible things that man had been capable of.

Robert hadn’t even conceived of the idea that Varys might not want to be rid of the Mad King and replace him with one who wasn’t a Targaryen. Personally, Tyrion suspected that Robert had merely always regarded Varys as beneath his notice, but he hadn’t been the only one whom Varys had fooled.

He’d fooled Tywin, and Tyrion, all of them, and Tyrion had always known that the man was up to something, but he hadn’t quite suspected that it was…well, more than just treason, in this case, though Tyrion still couldn’t say with any certainty what the man might be up to.

After all, Viserys Targaryen was dead. Killed at the hands of his child sister’s husband, it was rumored.

In front of him, he watched Jon Connington say something to the banker in low tones, sounding like some sort of confirmation to whatever it was the banker had just said, and Tyrion felt his heart clench, just a little, where he stood in the shadows.

“I am glad to have done business with you, Ser Griff,” the banker said, reaching out to clasp Jon Connington’s hand in his own, and Tyrion grimaced, his suspicions confirmed with the use of that name.

If it could rightly be called a name, when it was in fact a place.

Griff. Like Griffin’s Roost, Connington’s ancestral home, which had been taken from him after Robert had defeated Rhaegar and claimed the Iron Throne for himself.

Perhaps Tyrion had been doubtful before, because he had, after all, never personally met Jon Connington, but that rather clinched it, in his mind.

What a stupid idea for an alias, he thought, amused despite the dull sense of horror filling him, because if Jon Connington wasn’t dead or killed by the Golden Company for stealing from them, then there had to be some reason that he was here, standing in one of the most prestigious banks in the world, shaking hands with one of their envoys when Tycho had not even deigned to shake Tyrion’s hand.

He took a deep breath, and then another, for once thankful that he was a dwarf and therefore less able to take up as much space.

Jon Connington dipped his head, and then turned around and strode out of the long corridor, and it was only then that Tyrion remembered to breathe again.

He moved away from the wall, only to find that he’d been right, moments before; Noho glanced up at him darkly, the moment he moved, and sent him a little smirk.

“Lord Tyrion Lannister,” he drawled, and yes, he did sound rather smug, Tyrion thought, annoyance flashing through him.

Jon Connington, Jon Connington, Jon Connington.

Griff.

“Dimittis,” Tyrion greeted him, as coldly as he could manage without worrying about the Iron Bank turning against his proposal. “Interesting company that you keep. I wasn’t aware that there were many Braavosi with such…fair hair.”

Noho Dimittis grunted, moving closer to him still, and Tyrion couldn’t help the strange feeling that perhaps he was in some level of danger, from the other man, that perhaps he ought to have acted more respectful, moments ago.

But dear gods, Tyrion was tired of so many damned plots. Plots within plots, as Bronn had put it once, and he’d been right.

His sister, killing her husband so that she could leave Highgarden, and who knew?

Perhaps it had been even more complex than that; perhaps she had known that Margaery would of course want to go to her brother Willas’ funeral, that she would take a ship on her way back even if she had gone by the Roseroad on the way there. Perhaps she had planned from the beginning that Margaery should die alongside Cersei’s poor, cripple of a husband, on a ship in the middle of the sea, where her body could never be recovered for the sake of her family, where her brother would no doubt die with her, in case the Tyrells got any more ideas about marrying into House Lannister, member of the Kingsguard or not.

Tyrion gritted his teeth. He didn’t credit his sister with such smarts, even if she was a shrew, however. He couldn’t, not after all of these years of knowing her far too well.

Sansa, sending that letter about the Lannisters’ weaknesses to Stannis, in the hopes that he would capitalize on them in taking Winterfell, would turn around and take King’s Landing and at the very least spare her, in return.

Though, to Tyrion’s horror when he’d first been handed the letter - once again, by Varys - he’d noticed that Sansa had not asked for such concessions, not truly. Oh, she had asked that her family’s name be restored as the true Lords of Winterfell, but she had not asked for her own survival, should King’s Landing be successfully taken again.

Perhaps she had not expected it, even with her family’s insistence that Stannis was the rightful heir to the throne, once upon a time.

Or perhaps she’d been hoping that he would not agree to it, after losing the woman that she…loved, Tyrion thought, the same horrible thought that had convinced him to drag Sansa to the Tyrells in Highgarden by her hair, if he fucking had to.

Anything to get her away from the rest of his wretched family, lest Joffrey take advantage of her depressed state, or Sansa decided that she simply didn’t give a fuck about the survival he’d once seen as so important to her, and killed the little fucker in plain view of half of the city.

“Ah, but he’s not Braavosi,” Dimittis said, a smirk touching at his lips, now. He did not bother to offer more information, however. “Do you need help finding the way out, Lord Tyrion?” He asked, and Tyrion grunted, making his excuses as he left, but still unable to stop thinking about the red-haired man, who by all rights should have been as dead as Margaery Tyrell was, at the moment.

* * *

“You look as though you could use a drink, Lord Hand,” a voice said, and Tyrion spun around, finding himself face to face with the First Sword of Braavos, Qarro. 

He’d been avoiding the man almost since he had first brought Tyrion and his retinue to see the Sealord, but he had noticed that Bronn seemed to be spending quite a good deal of time with him, swapping either fighting techniques or…less savory stories.

Tyrion was very aware of the fact that only the First Sword of Braavos was permitted to wear weaponry within the Sealord’s palace, and yet, somehow, Bronn seemed to find himself getting away with it rather too much, in recent days, save for when he was no longer in the company of the First Sword.

Which rather explained, Tyrion supposed, why Bronn seemed to be spending so much time in the company of the First Sword, investigating the Sealord’s menagerie or hopping taverns with the First Sword, rather than spending his time protecting Tyrion or Shae, as he was supposed to be.

"I, uh, think I'll pass," he said, giving the man a thin smile. "But thank you anyway."

The First Sword eyed him for a moment, and then shrugged and kept walking, either unaware of or pretending not to notice the way that Tyrion followed him suspiciously with his eyes. The Sealord and his people had tried to get Tyrion drunk one too many times lately, after all, and Tyrion had a feeling he was going to need all of his faculties for what came next.

But Pod was standing valiant guard outside of the room he was sharing with Shae, at one of the more honored parts of the Sealord’s palace, which was rather more honor than either of the seemed to receive in King’s Landing, and he nodded to Tyrion as the man neared.

“Anything to report?” Tyrion asked, smirking slightly at the slightly startled expression on Pod’s face. The poor boy had been guarding rather valiantly, but he’d also been staring rather longingly at the skirt walking past, a serving girl with head lowered and eyes glancing every so often in his direction.

Pod grimaced as Tyrion laughed, and the serving girl scurried on, meeting neither of their gazes and flushing furiously.

But his laughter quickly faded away as he remembered why he had hurried back here so quickly, why he had been so nervous before he had noticed Pod standing there.

He grimaced, stepping within the chamber, knowing that Shae was in there, and even though a part of him wished to have some time to himself to think, he wasn’t about to kick her out after their last conversation, when he’d realized how angry she really was at him for keeping so many things from her.

A part of him, the part that had noticed the way the Sealord had been looking at Shae during that first feast, and the lords who didn’t spend as much time with him so far had done every time since, that he shouldn’t have to share so many things with Shae, because she was a whore, after all, even if he did love her.

But Tyrion was unused to sharing so much with someone else, especially someone who was also sharing his bed.

Shae was sitting on the edge of their bed when he returned to their quarters within the Sealord’s palace, running her fingers over a book that she quickly shoved under her thigh the moment she heard the door opening.

Tyrion raised a brow, but didn’t think much of it when Shae turned a glance on him that was almost kind.

“Hey,” she said, smiling at him, but not bothering to get up from her seat on the edge of the bed.

Tyrion smiled at her, too, because for a moment, looking at her, beautiful in the torchlight of their room, he could almost forget about everything else that had just occurred. About the Iron Bank, about this whole fuck up with the Tyrells, about Joffrey and his dear older sister.

And then he remembered what that fortune teller had told them, and he gritted his teeth and reached for his belt, peeling it off.

“How did it go?” Shae asked, reaching out and rubbing at his shoulders idly, a small smile on her face, and a part of Tyrion knew he ought to be happy that she was speaking so happily to him again, that she seemed happy to see him at all, considering recent events.

Tyrion knew that she still hadn’t quite forgiven him for Sansa, and beyond that, she now had him to thank for the thing growing within her, the thing that might just as easily kill her as it had his mother, if they weren’t careful.

And he knew that finding the best maester in the world to deliver this child would not make them careful enough.

Shae blinked at him when he didn’t respond, merely staring at her, and then prompted, looking a bit bemused, “The meeting with the Iron Bank?”

Tyrion cleared his throat, pulling away from her then, and trying to ignore the flash of hurt that crossed her features when he did so.

“Uhm, yeah,” Tyrion said, still distracted. “It went…better than I was expecting.”

Shae gave him a concerned glance, and he could sense that she wanted to ask what on earth that meant, but he didn’t think that he could deal with her question, just now.

Her questions, or the fact that she was…pregnant, something that Tyrion was still trying to wrap his head around, besides everything else he was struggling with at the moment.

And Jon Connington was still alive, despite it being reported by Lord Varys wide and large that the man had drank himself to death. As Tyrion remembered it, Robert had been worried about the thought of Rhaegar’s old supporters standing behind Viserys, if the boy ever attempted to claim his throne.

Still alive, and going by Griff, and meeting with the Iron Bank when a minor lord such as he had once been would not have even made it through the gates into that building.

He grimaced, turning slightly away from her, but not before he saw the way that her face fell, again, and he let out another sigh at that, because he knew it was something that he was going to have to deal with, as well.

Later, though.

Right now, all Tyrion wanted was a good stiff drink, and, after all, the First Sword of Braavos had offered, at one point.

He only hoped that the other man had been serious, because Tyrion damn well intended to drink the rest of his night away, if he had to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think!


	5. The Fat Man

When Tyrion was a child, his Uncle Gerion used to tell him stories about all of his travels, and there were indeed many of them, for his uncle had never been a man easily pinned down in one place, for all the time that Tyrion had known him.

His Aunt Genna said that was because of their father, but she had never explained what she meant by that, even if Tyrion had guessed, years later, by the way that he wished he could be away from his own father’s house.

But when he was a child, he used to look forward to his uncle’s visits more than anyone, because he would always be happy to share his stories with Tyrion, whereas when he got older, Jaime and his father never bothered.

Kevan had tried, with him, but he had children of his own, and he had always followed in Tywin’s shadow.

Jaime had tried, but he didn’t want to talk about the times that he was away, the few times that he was able to come and visit.

But Gerion had tons of stories to tell, and Tyrion had lived for every one of them, because there weren’t enough books in the libraries of Casterly Rock for a lonely, bored child.

But Tyrion remembered one time, when Gerion had shared a story about a group of mercenaries with a code, with a sense of honor. Men who were some of the greatest forces outside of Westeros, who fought bravely and died honorably for those that they were sworn to, and who never broke an agreement that they made.

The Golden Company, they were called. The greatest mercenaries in all of the world, and with the honor to back it up.

Tyrion wondered if mercenaries could really have a sense of honor.

“The Sealord asks if you are interested in having the morning meal with him,” the guard who pushed open the door to Tyrion’s chambers with Shae announced that morning, and Tyrion grimaced a little, reaching up to rub at his eyes.

When he glanced over at the bed beside him, there was nothing but rumpled sheets. Shae was gone, and Tyrion almost did not want to know where it was that she had gone.

He got up, reaching for his clothes and pulling them on in front of the unimpressed guard, and then following the man out of the room and down the corridor, and into the parlor that he had found the Sealord and his wife in the other day, except today, the wife was not here, and platters of food had been set up for the two of them, servants bustling around to prepare it.

The Sealord waved one of them off, and then waved for Tyrion to come and sit across from him, grinning at the other man.

“Come, sit,” the Sealord said, smiling at him. “There’s more than enough food for the two of us, I should think,” he said.

Tyrion snorted as he sat down. “Yes, I should think so,” he said, almost idly. Then, as he sat, “Are there any parties today?”

It seemed rather insensitive, after the way that the Merling Queen, famous for attending all of these festivities, had just died. He had noticed, at the Merling Queen’s rather excruciatingly long funeral, that all of the ladies of Braavos seemed concerned about whether or not the person who murdered the Merling Queen might next come after them, whether or not they were fanatics or it had been a crime of passion.

And here the Sealord was, drinking and speaking of feasts once again.

The Sealord smiled. “Of course. The whole of Braavos doesn’t have nearly enough time to meet the Lord Hand of Westeros, but there are certainly enough nobles who wish to,” he explained.

Tyrion pinched the bridge of his nose, as he reached for a piece of bread and some cheese. “I was rather thinking about avoiding a feast, tonight,” he offered, as he chewed, and not only because he thought it would be in poor taste to have one at all.

The Sealord sagged a little. “Are you sure?” He asked.

Tyrion pursed his lips. “Well, with the death of the Merling Queen, I would think that the nobles of Braavos wouldn’t want to hold another party,” he said, and the Sealord raised an eyebrow.

“Of course, her death was a tragic one,” he said, looking for a moment pained, but then quickly shrugging it off. “But a successor has already been chosen. It would not be good for her coming out party to be so soon after her predecessor’s death. That is the way of things, here in Braavos.”

Tyrion grimaced a little, because he wasn’t sure anymore that he wanted to learn more about the goings on of Braavos. While they seemed a bit more…liberal minded than King’s Landing, in a way that Tyrion certainly appreciated, there were some things about them that horrified even him, the first and foremost of these their cavalier attitude about…everything.

Nothing could be done in a great hurry here, not even the Iron Bank deciding whether or not to help him at a time when he rather dearly needed them to do so quickly, and it was infuriating, the longer he remained here.

But now, he had another mystery to uncover, while he waited for them to make up their damn minds, while he tried to figure out what the hells he and Shae were going to do, now that Shae had gone out and had a real midwife confirm that she was, in fact, pregnant.

That had been horrifying, and Tyrion had certainly drunk quite a bit, at the news. Shae had not taken his drinking in stride, storming out of the room the moment he reached for a bottle and ignoring the rather pointed look that Bronn sent Tyrion before he followed her out.

She was pregnant. She was really, very pregnant, with his child, and dear gods, if she were only pregnant with someone else’s child, perhaps the thought of losing her would not be so near on the forefront of Tyrion’s mind, but it was.

Because he had killed his own mother, and he did not want to kill her, too, when he was here in the first place trying to save his family.

But the alternative, the one that neither of them spoke of and which drove Tyrion to drink…that was difficult enough to think about.

“Tell me about the Golden Company,” Tyrion said instead of thinking about that any longer, and smirked at the look of shock on the Sealord’s face, as he all but sputtered on his wine.

“The…The Golden Company,” the Sealord repeated, stuttering the words.

Tyrion smirked. “Yes,” he said. “Those sworn against House Targaryen, the rumored mercenaries for hire. I hear that they exist out of here, in Braavos.”

The Sealord smacked his lips together, and then swallowed hard. “And what interest do you have in them, my lord?” He asked, and seemed to be trying rather hard not to sound too interested in Tyrion’s response.

Tyrion shrugged. “Merely an academic one,” he said. “As I have an academic interest in the continued prosperity of House Tyrell.” He gave the Sealord a long, knowing look.

The Sealord grimaced. “As I have said before, one can hardly know why, when they work actively against your own House, even now.”

Tyrion had no doubt that Tycho had asked the Sealord to figure out all he could about Tyrion’s motivations, about his sincerity, but he could have warned the man that the Sealord was hardly subtle enough for such a performance.

“It is of interest to me, though,” Tyrion said, knowing that the Sealord would be far more eager t change the next subject, “that you are so interested in my family’s own affairs. One would think you would know, as the Iron Bank must, that House Tyrell would be better able to meet their needs, and thus your own.”

He knew how mercenary that sounded, but he had a feeling that the Sealord, who had after all crawled his way up the ranks, wouldn’t hate him for it, as his wife did for whatever it was that made her so angry whenever he walked into the room.

The Sealord raised an eyebrow, and then blurted out, “More wine, my lord? I…understand that you rather enjoy it.”

Tyrion blinked, and then shook his head. “I’ve lost my taste for it, recently,” he admitted, because Tyrion Lannister had always drank when he was unhappy, and he couldn’t remember a single day when he was totally sober, after Tysha.

The Sealord looked surprised by that, and Tyrion narrowed his eyes, because it was not as if he’d had much to drink since arriving in Braavos, and it occurred to him to wonder where the Sealord might have heard such a rumor, why he was so concerned with Tyrion’s motivations, now that he was here.

“So,” he said, as the Sealord took rather a large gulp of wine from his own glass at the calculating look on Tyrion’s features, “The Golden Company. Ever met them?”

The Sealord grimaced. “The Golden Company is currently contracted with Myr, as they have been for many years now,” he said, and his tone was strangely placating, as if he thought that at any moment, he might fly off the handle.

Tyrion was suddenly convinced that he might be right to fear such a thing.

“But I think that a great many years ago, when I was,” the Sealord laughed a little, “far younger than I am today, I may have seen them, at one point.”

Tyrion leaned forward, interested despite himself. “And what were they like?” He asked, because he knew that he needed to be careful, not to get the Sealord’s guard up too quickly, when he was searching for information the same way that the Sealord was.

The Sealord smiled, looking suddenly older than Tyrion had thought him since he’d made the man’s acquaintance. “They were…fascinating,” he said, and for the first time, Tyrion thought he was seeing a glimpse of who this man really was, saw the man behind the fool that the Sealord pretended to be.

Saw why the Iron Bank had installed him as the Sealord in the first place.

“Men who wore golden armor, and carried themselves like knights,” the Sealord went on, and he was smiling slightly. “They looked like they could destroy all of Braavos with one man, if they needed to.”

Tyrion’s lips twitched. He wondered exactly how young the Sealord had been, at the time.

The Golden Company was not so old, after all. They had only been formed after they had broken their code to the Targaryens in the first place.

“And Jon Connington,” Tyrion said slowly, “Wasn’t he once a member of the Golden Company?”

The Sealord froze then, looking suddenly terrified, and Tyrion’s eyes narrowed, at the man’s sudden nervousness.

Not that it was surprising; it seemed that the Sealord was always nervous about something or other, though not when it came to embarrassing his wife in public.

“I…could not say,” the Sealord said finally, and Tyrion bit back a snort. The Sealord grimaced. “The Golden Company, they are a…secretive group, after all, and spend most of their time away from Braavos, certainly. After all, they are beholden to the people of Myr, as they have been for years, and they never break a contract.”

Tyrion’s brows furrowed. Yes, that was true; the Golden Company was known for never breaking a contract. His uncle had shared that with him as a child, and at the time, Tyrion had thought of them as true knights, rather than mercenaries for hire.

“Yes,” he agreed, “but do their men not serve for life?”

The Sealord’s throat bobbed. “I…I don’t suppose that I understand all of the intricacies of the Golden Company from seeing them only once,” he said, and Tyrion supposed he could give the other man that, even if he could tell from the man’s shady eyes that he was lying about something.

Still, Tyrion sent the other man a shark’s smile. “Yes,” he said, slowly, eying the other man carefully, “You don’t seem like the sort of man who does his research about those outside of his realm.”

The Sealord blinked at him, like he wasn’t quite sure whether that had been an insult or not, and then simply shrugged. “I prefer to learn from my friends, Lord Hand,” he said, leaning forward. “As I assure you we are, now.”

Tyrion bit back a snort. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said, and then stood to his feet.

The Sealord raised a brow. “My lord?”

Tyrion set down his glass. “I wonder, my friend, if you might not point me in the direction of a good tavern where I might be able to play a hand of cyvasse,” he said. “I understand it’s a very popular game, here, and I find it quite distracting.”

The Sealord blinked at him, leaning back in his chair. “Of course,” he said, and if he was surprised by the request, he didn’t allow it to show on his face. “I shall have my First Sword accompany you…”

“That won’t be necessary,” Tyrion interrupted him, forestalling his objections with a raised hand. “My sellsword, Bronn, is quite enough protection.”

The Sealord harrumphed. “My lord Hand, I fear that I would be remiss in my duties to you as a friend, to allow you to venture out in Braavos at this time without more than one guard…”

Tyrion rolled his eyes. “The tavern, my friend,” he said, putting a little more emphasis than needed on that final word, his opinion about the man already made up.

* * *

“So…you as a father,” Bronn said, as he slammed two large mugs of ale down on the table in the darkened hall of the tavern. Several people glanced their way, but luckily, the tavern was loud enough that no one seemed particularly concerned by the noise, even as Tyrion ducked his head a little.

He knew what the Sealord had been warning him, earlier, when he had mentioned that it was dangerous for Tyrion to go out on his own. The mummer’s plays in this city made clear enough what public opinion was of the Imp, regardless of how nice the Sealord attempted to be in order to stay in his good graces while Tyrion was in Braavos, buying from him and eating his food.

They thought him nothing more than a wicked rapist, who had attempted to control his nephew and beat his wife, and he didn’t think the fact that he was here to befriend the Iron Bank had done much to change said opinion of him.

Which was why he’d made Pod go out and find him some peasants’ clothes, before he’d gone to this particular tavern. Not that there were many dwarves in Braavos, but he could take his chances, so long as he didn’t look like the Hand of the King that the Sealord liked to parade him around as so much.

Still, he didn’t particularly like the idea of parading his dirty laundry around this whole tavern, on the off chance that some of them did realize who he was and did nothing about it.

Tyrion reached for his mug before Bronn had even finished speaking. “I don’t want to talk about that,” he muttered darkly, because it was perhaps the last thing he wanted to speak of at all, the last thing he even wanted to be reminded of, and Bronn snorted.

“Don’t blame you,” he said, leaning back in his chair and taking a large gulp of his own ale. “Wouldn’t want to either, if I were you. Though you’re lucky; my little wife is an ugly thing. At least yours is pretty enough to make babies.”

Tyrion clenched his teeth, wondering why the man was bothering to pursue this, when he’d been rather silent about the matter since they’d seen the fortune teller in the marketplace. “She’s not my wife,” he gritted out darkly, because he wasn’t, and Bronn held up his hands.

“Whatever you say,” he said, and Tyrion reached up to pinch at the bridge of his nose, entirely too sober to be having this conversation.

Luckily, the ale in this particular tavern, which was not one that the Sealord, who did not spend much time out amongst his people in the first place, had ever been to, was exceedingly cheap.

Not that it mattered. Tyrion was here on the Tyrells’ dime, in the long run, so he might as well spend as much as he pleased.

When Tyrion glanced over the rim of his mug at Bronn, it was to find the man staring with rather wide eyes at a blonde haired whore, carrying around several sloshing mugs of ale and smiling rather prettily at Bronn.

“And anyway,” Tyrion said, taking another swig of his ale, “Your wife’s hardly ugly.”

Bronn shrugged. “I look at her and see the woman that Cersei Lannister handed to me for not offering to defend you when you were arrested for the murder of your father,” he said, sounding serious for the first time since Tyrion had met him, he thought.

Or perhaps he was remembering that wrong; he couldn’t say.

And he couldn’t necessarily blame Bronn for the confession he’d just made, either. Not when he could hardly stomach the rooms he had lived in, as Hand of the King, knowing that they belonged to the same tower as the rooms his now dead father had lived in.

Even the shithole that Cersei had thrown him into after the Battle of Blackwater had been better than that.

Tyrion felt…oddly touched, by Bronn’s admission, and he suspected the other man could tell, from the way he snorted at Tyrion.

Tyrion hastily cleared his throat and searched for something to change the subject. “Do you think we’re too late?”

Bronn squinted at him, and then shrugged his shoulders. “Your brother is pretty resourceful, when he wants to be,” he said, and Tyrion blinked at him, because as much as he loved his brother, that wasn’t how he’d describe him.

Bronn smirked at him. “He killed the last mad king while serving in the Kingsguard,” he pointed out, and, unlike anyone else who had ever brought the topic up with Tyrion, he sounded almost admiring.

Tyrion had forgotten how much time Bronn had spent alone with Jaime; it felt strange, when Tyrion had never had any people in his life that he considered friends, before Bronn, and now he knew that he shared him with Jaime, even if Tyrion had found him first.

“You think so?” He asked, trying to sound less worried than he felt.

Bronn looked at him as if he was seeing straight through him. “The old Tyrell woman gave you her word that she wouldn’t hurt the children and Jaime no matter if she did wait to attack King’s Landing until you came back,” he pointed out, and Tyrion grimaced. “So I suppose the important thing here is whether or not you trust her to keep her word.”

That made Tyrion flinch even more. Oh, he knew that Olenna wouldn’t want to lose his goodwill; Braavos might be rather far away from King’s Landing, but it was clear enough from all of the mummer’s plays he’d seen recently that they got enough news about Westeros, here. And Olenna Tyrell was a smart woman.

She had to at least know it was a risk, that while he was still here negotiating with the Iron Bank, he might hear that she had slaughtered the rest of his family. And clearly, she knew the importance of getting the Iron Bank on her side, rather than the Lannisters’, or Stannis’.

Besides that, if she killed Tommen, she wouldn’t have a single good claim to the throne, with her granddaughter dead and having died without giving Joffrey an heir.

But it was Jaime and Myrcella that he worried about, the both of them still stranded in King’s Landing alongside Tommen.

And Tyrion didn’t know that he could trust Olenna with their lives, much as a part of him thrilled at the thought of the unholy alliance they had created.

He had already been burned once before, by Margaery Tyrell, before she had died. Had decided to trust her to work with him on Sansa’s escape from King’s Landing, when they had both thought she was going to die alongside Oberyn Martell, only to find himself burned in return.

It did little for Tyrion’s very hard to gain trust in the first place, and Tyrion had always found the Tyrells to be power grasping nobles with ambitions above their own stations, before that.

But he thought he trusted Olenna Tyrell’s ambitions enough in this, at the very least.

He thought that, in the Sept while they stared at Willas Tyrell’s grave, she hd been more honest with him than she had ever been with anyone. That she had meant every word of the fury and vengeance she had whispered of.

And he had believed her enough to come all of the way here, to cling to one small hope for his family, rather than returning to King’s Landing in the sure knowledge that they were fucked, whether it be by the hands of those religious fanatics, or the Tyrell army.

At least with the Tyrells, he knew what sort of people they were. They were able to negotiate; they wanted something, and he knew what.

He had no idea what the fuck those Sparrows wanted, and so he had come here.

He only wished he’d been able to come up with some good reason to drag the rest of the family that he gave a damn about out of King’s Landing when he’d gone to Highgarden, but he’d known damn well that his fucking sister was never going to allow that, and Jaime wouldn’t leave her, or their children.

He wondered if they would finally be Jaime’s children, once Cersei was gone.

His silence seemed to speak volumes; Bronn winced.

“Maybe we can just stay here,” Bronn said, gesturing around to tavern. Tyrion quirked an eyebrow. “Stay in Braavos, I mean, and fuck the rest of Westeros.”

Tyrion grimaced; he was ashamed to admit, at least in the privacy of his own mind, that he’d given it some thought, once or twice, since arriving here.

And if his brother and his brother’s two good children weren’t trapped in King’s Landing, threatened at the hands of far too many religious peasants and one of the largest armies in Westeros, besides, Tyrion might have considered it.

Bronn sighed, clearly reading his thoughts on Tyrion’s face. “Well, it was worth a shot,” he muttered, and gestured for one of the tavern wenches to bring them some more ale.

He downed it too quickly, and waved for her to bring him another.

She rolled his eyes as he stared after her, and Tyrion snorted. “Making progress?” He asked, and Bronn sighed.

“These Braavosi women,” he said, and he was almost pouting as he did so. “I just don’t seem to have the same charm with them as I did…in Westeros.”

The pause was rather deliberate, Tyrion thought, and he wondered where specifically Bronn was thinking about.

“Well good. I need you focused,” Tyrion admitted, and Bronn blinked at him. “I want you to look into something for me,” Tyrion said, leaning forward across the table, and Bronn snorted, setting his mug down and crossing his arms.

“Ah,” he said, and Tyrion raised a brow, though he didn’t look at all surprised by the request. “The real reason that you wanted to get out from under the shadow of the Sealord’s palace.”

Tyrion shrugged, not bothering to confirm it. “No one must find out about this, Bronn, I mean it,” he said, and Bronn rolled his eyes.

“When have I ever let you down in the past?” He asked, lips quirking in amusement.

Tyrion could name a few times, but he didn’t bother to mention them. “I need you to find out everything you can about a red-haired man named Griff,” he said, and Bronn blinked at him after several seconds of silence, quirking his lips.

Then, he scoffed, when he seemed to realize that Tyrion had finished what he was planning to say.

“That’s all you’ve got for me?” Bronn asked incredulously. Then, eying Tyrion and then the girl walking behind Tyrion’s place at the table, “That’s not a lot to go on. Even here.”

Tyrion pursed his lips. “I know it’s not much,” he said. “But he’s here, in Braavos, and he very recently was a customer of the Iron Bank. I want to know why.”

Gods, did he want to know why.

It wasn’t like the Iron Bank often catered to exiled knights without a name.

Bronn raised an eyebrow. “You know more than that,” he accused, and Tyrion didn’t bother to deny it. Bronn usually didn’t demand an answer to his plotting, after all.

Someone in the corner of the room let out a shout, then, and Tyrion turned his gaze towards a rather feisty brawl, as two of the tavern guests started to hit each other.

“And, I think that’s our cue to leave,” he muttered, getting to his feet and slapping two gold coins down on the table.

Bronn stood with him, staring longingly after the tavern wench even as he did so.

Tyrion rolled his eyes. “There will be other women,” he commiserated, and Bronn merely let out a breathy sigh.

“Yes,” Bronn admitted wistfully, “but none of them are her.”

This time, when Tyrion rolled his eyes, he more than meant it, but not before he turned back and glanced at the tavern wench again. She didn’t look that impressive, not to Tyrion. Not any different from any other whore, save for being a bit more exotic. “I think you’ve found enough at the palace, haven’t you?”

Bronn shrugged as they moved towards the door. “Highborn wenches ain’t the same,” he said. “You’ve had one, you’ve had them all. They all want something more than a quick fuck, too.”

Tyrion couldn’t really relate to that. He didn’t think he’d ever had a highborn wench, after all. Most of the women he’d ever touched had all been whores, after all.

He wondered if any of them had ever been highborn, before they became whores.

He sighed as they stepped towards the door, the tavern wench looking appreciatively towards Bronn as they walked out, and Tyrion raised an eyebrow, for she didn’t move to come closer to them, nor did she seem interested in them more than that.

Then Tyrion noticed she was holding the two gold coins he had just placed down on their table in her hands. He smirked, and didn’t bother to point it out to Bronn, who was already puffing out his chest and looking like he was considering walking over to her.

“Hey!” Someone in the tavern shouted, and Tyrion…was not entirely certain why he had even bothered to turn around, but he did.

A red-faced man was glowering straight at him. “You’re the Imp, ain’t ya?”

Tyrion bit the inside of his cheek.

He saw several other men getting up from their places at various tables throughout the tavern, and grimaced, realizing that perhaps this truly had been a bad idea, to come here at all.

He’d gotten a very good impression of how the rest of Braavos saw him from those mummer’s plays, from the way that the Sealord’s wife often glared at him like she would happily rip his throat out with her bare hands.

Even if the mummer’s plays were put on for entertainment, it was evident that enough people believed the tales they were telling.

He should never have ventured outside of the Sealord’s palace, even if he hadn’t wanted prying ears to overhear him.

Bronn reached for his sword, where it hung at his waist, then, and smirked at the first man who had spoken while eying up all of the others.

“What’s it to ya?” He asked, and Tyrion should have known that Bronn had been itching for a fight, ever since he had come to Braavos and met the First Sword, who by law, he could not challenge to any sort of fight, even if Bronn had also gotten around the law of not being able to wear a sword within the Sealord’s palace.

Tyrion suspected that was mostly due to the fact that the Sealord did not want to offend Tyrion, however, even if it was a Braavosi law.

The men in the tavern seemed to need no more invitation than Bronn’s grinning face, and Tyrion took a step back and, with a long sigh, settled against the far wall to watch the fight go on.

Bronn was the sort of sellsword who liked to play with his food a little bit, before he made it clear how laughably easy it had been for him, to defeat his enemy.

“Who’s next?” Bronn demanded of the tavern, grinning, his arms splayed out by his side, fists and half of his face covered in blood.

He looked more in his element than he had during a feast full of highborn women all wanting to fuck him.

Tyrion rolled his eyes, and gestured for the young tavern wench to bring him some more ale. She did, without a word, clearly not judging him for the same thing that the men of the tavern were judging him for, though it was not as if Tyrion was unused to being judged for who he was.

Here, they simply thought him rapist, abuser. Imp with ambitions above his station.

He wondered if his sister might have liked things better, here in Braavos. The women of the city clearly, despite the noblemen’s philandering, had more freedoms than the women of Westeros, and didn’t seem to try and hide the fact.

Sometimes, Tyrion thought his sister’s mind suffered so greatly because she wished to have even half the freedoms that a man could.

He wondered if she really had ever fucked their brother, the way all of Westeros seemed to assume she had.

One of the drunken men of the tavern went flying across the room. The next came forward, and Bronn let out a loud laugh.

Tyrion wondered if he’d been getting bored, with his little wife outside of King’s Landing, and had wanted to come on this trip regardless of what sort of treasonous activities Tyrion might have cooked up.

Then he remembered that Bronn had spent a good deal of time, during the past year, fighting alongside Jaime.

Another man fell to the ground, grunting loudly. Tyrion finished off his ale, but the tavern wench wasn’t anywhere around to refill it.

Godsdamn it, he was tired of watching his fights played out by other people.

He was tired of feeling helpless.

And he was tired of this helpless, terrified feeling that had been sitting in his gut, ever since he had learned that Shae was pregnant. That she was pregnant with his child, and that, like his mother, he might lose her to a dwarf.

And then there was that other part of him, the part that felt even more helpless, that wanted to take the risk anyway, something he had never wanted his entire life, because his family had always made it clear that they loathed him, and that they didn’t want him to bring any children into this world. And Tyrion hadn’t wanted to bring a child into this world who might be treated even more cruelly by their relatives.

Dear gods, he’d never thought about bringing a child into this world with the myriad women he had been with, throughout his life, and yet, the moment he laid eyes on that fortune teller who told them what Shae had clearly already suspected, he’d felt a sudden yearning for that very thing.

But, as he watched Bronn beat the shit out of the man in front of him, Tyrion couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a risk that he genuinely cared about.

Which was funny, wasn’t it, when he was here fucking over half of his family to save the other.

* * *

A girl found it much easier to execute the kills that the Kindly Man sent her on if some part of her thought her target deserved them.

She knew that the Kindly Man, and most particularly the Waif, saw that as a weakness; as a sign that she still had not let go of the part of her that used to be Arya Stark, the part of her that believed that certain people deserved a death at her hands, but it was something that she still couldn’t seem to shake, in all of the time that a girl had been at the House of Black and White.

She had not been able to shake it when she refused to kill that mummer who had been playing Cersei Lannister, and who had been kind to her. She had not been able to shake it as she stood over the body of the Merling Queen, whom she hadn’t even been supposed to kill in the first place for some time, and butchered it because of the guilt she felt rising up within her.

And she knew that part of the reason that the Kindly Man had sent her after both of those people was to teach her that lesson, that she did not have control over the lives of those she killed; every life belonged to the Many Faced God, and she was merely ridding the world of that life.

Nothing more.

Like the stable child killing rats in Winterfell during the hotter months of the summer, indiscriminately.

But she was glad when her punishment was finally over, and a girl was sent to kill someone truly deserving of her particular brand of justice.

She’d been watching him for several days, now; he was a pig of a man, grotesquely fat while the rest of his sad little family looked on the verge of starvation. His children looked like the Waif, in their paleness. Several times, a girl had seen the man’s wife leaving their little house, covered in mottled bruises but uttering not a single complaint.

She hated how every battered woman she came across, these days, every woman with a sad tale to tell, every polite woman, every woman who sent her a smile - she hated how they all seemed to remind her of a girl with red hair and Tully eyes whom she had been trying so damned hard to forget, since she had become No One.

She did not know his name, this man she had been sent to kill in the dead of night, in a very specific way, and so her mind simply called him the Fat Man, while his wife was Sansa, his daughter was Sansa, and she wondered how his son still stood on his own two feet, with the way that the Fat Man beat him so often.

She licked her lips, getting to her feet to follow the Fat Man down to the market again; he always sold his wares at the Arsenal, one of the two harbors in Braavos where foreigners were allowed to dock, and these normally the wealthier ones, the ones more likely to be legal, selling their wares and submitting for expensive inspections by the harbor master.

It was here that the Fat Man came daily, to sell his wares to wealthy women getting off of ships with too much money in their pockets before they came into contact with the little pickpockets of the city, and lords with far too much money to spend even after that.

He normally made quite a good amount of money there, despite the lack of hours he spent there, despite the paltry clothes on his son’s back, and the feebleness of his wife’s body.

It made it a little easier to plan how she was going to kill him than it had been to kill the Merling Queen, though a girl knew that this was part of the Kind’y Man’s newest lesson to her.

She had hesitated, in killing the Merling Queen; that had been a mistake that he would not allow her to repeat.

A part of her was honestly surprised that this time, the lesson should not be that she had to follow around a truly evil man, and then spare him, in the end.

She thought she couldn’t put it past the Kindly Man to try that, either.

The Fat Man had already set up his shop, a little pavilion that his son helped him erect right in front of the docks, so that it was impossible for incoming people in the harbor not to pass him on their way into the city.

It was a rather ingenious set up, for a man who didn’t seem to be the smartest person in his family. A girl strongly suspected that he hadn’t been the one to come up with it on his own.

She took up her own residence across the street from him, with her little cart full of fruit that would all be rotting by the end of the day; but enough people would come forward to buy it, most of them probably men who thought she looked pretty, more than anything else.

It gave her a perfect vantage of the Fat Man, as he tricked and beguiled and trapped every man who passed him into buying something of his wares.

Though, a girl supposed that it helped that he was selling juicy meats, rather than something a bit less appetizing.

And so she spent most of the day watching him making his sales, silent save for a few smiles to those who came forward to buy some of her fruits, just as she had spent the last several days.

And that was why she heard it.

Two men, standing a bit further away from the main docks, obviously trying not to be overheard, and if that was the case, a girl couldn’t help but wonder why they were spending so much of their time in the middle of a busy harbor.

But the one man was a sellsword, a familiar looking one at that, and the other looked foreign even to Braavosi standards.

Their conversation was intense, the two of their heads bent low, and despite herself and her mission, a girl was intrigued enough to eavesdrop, as she leaned forward and pretended to be dusting off her wares.

“Listen here,” the sellsword said, planting his feet rather widely on the cobblestones, and a girl rolled her eyes, watching him.

Out of the corner of her vision, she could still see the Fat Man sitting with his wares, not paying attention to this at all.

He wasn’t going anywhere, a girl decided, moving closer to this peculiar sellsword spending his nights in the palace of the Sealord, trying to bring girls into his bed, and his days in a harbor that the Sealord refused to enter, on account of it not housing Braavosi.

“I think you do know something,” the sellsword continued, in that same tone of voice he’d used with Merebeth, and she gritted her teeth, just hearing it, and wondered if this really was some sort of elaborate test on behalf of the Kindly Man, if the Merling Queen hadn’t been it at all.

But that didn’t make sense, after the way that she had reacted to the mummer playing Cersei.

And then the sellsword reached into his pocket, and pulled out a Westerosi coin.

A girl paused, staring at it, transfixed.

It was not as if it was the only Westerosi coin she had seen, since coming to Braavos. Indeed, it was not even in the first ten she’d seen this week.

Dozens of Westerosi nobles, all of them rats sinking a fleeing ship, had fled King’s Landing since the rumors that it had been overtaken by dangerous religious fanatics had started to circulate, all of them clearly deciding that they would have better luck in a place like Braavos, instead.

They came here, and either gained an audience with the Sealord, or disappeared into the crowded streets of the marshlands, never to be seen again. Disappearing into their new lives without a trace, and a girl suspected that many of them preferred it that way.

A girl hadn’t recognized any of those that she had come across, and for that, she was rather grateful.

That is, until Tyrion Lannister came to Braavos, and was at that party that the Merling Queen had brought all of her mermaids too.

A girl flinched at the thought; Beth, following the Fat Man, shouldn’t know who Tyrion was at all, not even as the Imp, she thought, for she was a phenomenally stupid girl, if anyone caught her loitering around these harbors for too long.

“If you tell me what you do know,” the sellsword continued, in that far too conversational tone, “I think you’ll find that my master can be very rewarding.”

A girl raised her eyebrows. She had noticed that this particular sellsword was wearing an actual sword, while in the presence of the Sealord, and had thought, for some moments, that perhaps he was the Sealord’s First Sword, the first time she saw him, but she’d known that she had to be mistaken, the moment he started speaking.

Far too Westerosi.

Which meant that his master, most likely, was…

She swallowed hard, her throat suddenly very dry, as she wondered what sort of scheme the Lannister was up to, in coming here in the first place, when she knew that they never abandoned their family.

No matter the horrible things that wicked family was capable of, they were still strong because they all were as wicked as each other.

She couldn’t imagine one of them leaving the rest behind, not when he no doubt had something to gain from staying with them, from the Lannisters staying in power.

Which meant that whatever it was the Lannisters were up to, by sending Sansa’s wicked husband here, it was something terrible, something that perhaps she didn’t want to know about. Something that was only going to help Cersei Lannister and her bastard of a son, and there was nothing a girl could do about any of that until she finished her training, here.

She gritted her teeth, and was just about to turn away, despite how painful it felt to do so, when the skittish man the sellsword was speaking to spoke up.

“Listen, I’m not supposed to…”

The sellsword picked another bag of coins out of his inner coat, and handed it over. The skittish man gulped, and then stepped closer to the sellsword.

And a girl, despite her mission, despite the fact that it meant she would no longer have her eyes on the Fat Man, stepped closer still.

“There are rumors,” the skittish man whispered, and his voice was quaking so hard that a girl almost couldn’t understand what he was saying, for all her eavesdropping capabilities, since she had come here, “that the Golden Company has left Myr, breaking their contract for the first time since they were formed. And that they’re headed West.”

The sellsword raised an eyebrow; a girl blinked, and then her eyes narrowed at the implications of why Tyrion Lannister’s sellsword might be asking about the Golden Company, might be offering so much gold for that information, even if the Lannisters did shit gold, like the Hound had always said.

Oh no.

Oh gods, no.

When she was a little girl, her sister used to tease her - tease being a rather kind word for the way that Sansa always turned up her lips at Arya’s boyish hobbies - about her taste in stories, for, though she loved to go out with the boys, loved to pretend that she knew how to be a sword and never wanted to be the damsel waiting inside, sewing, her favorite story had always been about the Queen Nymeria.

In fact, she’d had quite a few stories that she loved, about the old Targaryens, back when they were romantic and fascinating, rather than fire murderers and madmen.

And she remembered that the Golden Company, the one honorable group of mercenaries to exist, had not been formed until after they had betrayed Rhaegar Targaryen. That they were sworn never to betray another master, so long as they had a contract.

And, try as she might, Arya had always found that story just as romantic as the ones she heard about Nymeria Targaryen.

She swallowed hard; if the Golden Company had indeed destroyed its well earned reputation by breaking a contract, then she knew…they put have been offered a Lannister’s share of gold.

And that meant that once again, the fucking Lannisters were going to win something, because if they had the Golden Company on their side as well as their own gold cloaks, then whoever it was they were fighting was going to be fucked.

And, even if a girl wasn’t supposed to care a single shit about the Lannisters, not until she had finished her training here, she found her fists clenching in annoyance at her sides, because dear gods, it bothered her, how many times the Lannisters seemed to get away with anything at all, because of the amount of gold in their deep pockets, no matter how many atrocities they committed, no matter how many families they murdered, the way that they had murdered Arya Stark’s.

But…no.

If Tyrion Lannister’s sellsword was here, asking questions about the Golden Company, that meant he didn’t know that the Golden Company had broken its contract, didn’t know why.

She swallowed hard, and tried to shove down the sense of pleasure she felt, at the realization.

“Well, fuck,” the sellsword muttered then, confirming her thoughts.

And a girl let a slow smile spread across her face, at the realization, because even if she had no idea who really had contracted the Golden Company, the fact that the Lannisters had not, and that their sellsword was scared of the fact that someone else had, warmed her a little, Arya Stark or no.

The Lannisters were about to be attacked by a group of mercenaries known for never losing a single battle, known for never breaking a single contract, and yet this time, they had, just to come after the Lannisters.

There was something like poetic justice in that, and for just a moment, when a girl closed her eyes, she didn’t see the Merling Queen’s resigned face staring back at her.

It felt…nice.

She licked her lips, turning back towards the Fat Man, trying to remind herself that it shouldn't matter to her at all, that she had far more important things to be dealing with, at the moment, even if the Fat Man didn’t feel that important, to her.

Because there was nothing she could do but sit back and wait, see if the Lannisters truly were defeated by whoever had hired the Golden Company, this time.

If they were, a girl would be happy to thank whoever it was who had wiped out her enemies for her, so long as someone was left on her list at the end of this.

So long as it meant that she had a home to return to, eventually.

She swallowed hard, glancing over at the Fat Man. He was haggling with a particularly stubborn merchant, one who didn’t seem to think that he needed the Fat Man’s wares. But instead of taking his anger out on the lost customer, the Fat Man seemed to be taking it out on his son, if the glare he was sending the boy was any indication.

A girl closed her eyes, because it was only when she did so that she found herself imagining a hand in her hair, a pleasant smile as her own father knelt down in front of her and warned her that she was going to be in trouble with the septa, if the older woman found her out here, playing with the boys.

When she opened her eyes again, she was already moving away from her food cart, uncertain what her plan was but unable to take her eyes off of the young boy in front of the Fat Man’s cart, his hands already raised to brace himself from a hit that he as clearly more than familiar with, as the Fat Man raised his hand.

She didn’t make it all of the way across the cobblestone street, however, before she slammed into someone hard and unyielding. A girl let out a cry, stumbling backward and glancing up at the man, blinking in fear when she realized who it was that she had run into.

That fucking sellsword, who, it seemed, just could never let her the hells alone.

“Whoa, whoa,” the voice said, and a girl closed her eyes tightly shut, resisting the urge to swear under her breath because dear gods, what were the odds?

She tried to stumble away from the man, but someone else was passing behind her, ending up with her being shoved back into the sellsword once more.

The sellsword let out a grunt of surprise, and glanced down at her, in turn. And then his eyes widened, and a girl felt her stomach sink, because of course it was just her misfortune, today, that the sellsword would recognize her from their time together on the pleasure barge.

He had, after all, thought her pretty enough to approach, then, even if she looked more like a street rat than a mermaid, today.

“I’ve seen you before,” the sellsword said, eying her suspiciously, and a girl didn’t roll her eyes, because she knew that just might give it away immediately, and the sooner she could get away from this man, the better.

She tried to break the grip that he had on her upper arm, but for all her training in the House of Black and White, the sellsword was still twice her size and seemed determined to hinder her, just now.

“I think you’re mistaken,” she muttered, lowering her gaze and trying to deepen her voice from how it had sounded the last time he’d spoken to her.

She glanced over at the Fat Man, saw that his son was already splayed out on the cobblestones, reaching up to rub at his cheek. There was a blooming red mark on his cheek, and the Fat Man merely grunted and turned back to his wares without a single word to the boy.

The boy climbed to his feet, looking shaken. A girl had to wonder why, when it was so clear to her that this was not the first time that the Fat Man had tried to beat the boy in public, in front of so many.

And, all around them, all of these people, whether they noticed the confrontation, didn’t say a damn thing.

It reminded her of the way that the Kindly Man had hit her, after she had returned from killing the Merling Queen.

The sellsword shook his head. “No,” he said, for he didn’t seem to have noticed the boy at all, or the Fat Man, “No, I’ve definitely seen you somewhere. You’re…familiar.”

A girl lifted her chin, glaring up at him. “Let go of me,” she gritted out, “Or I’ll scream.”

The sellsword blinked at her, and then his eyes narrowed, his lips pulling into a tiny smirk. “Ah,” he said. “That’s where I recognize you from.” And then he blinked, seeming to take in her clothes once more, the dirt smeared on her face to make it appear as if she had spent the night out on the streets, the fact that her hair was shorn from her time as Merebeth.

It wouldn’t do for anyone to recognize her, after all, a girl thought wryly, annoyed with the sellsword more than she was with herself.

“Wait,” he began, looking her over, “what the fuck are you doing out here?”

She took advantage of his surprise in that moment, reaching out and breaking his grip on her arm, something she suspected she wouldn't be able to do at all if he weren’t so confused at the sight of her there, and then she took off running.

It didn’t take long, to disappear into the crowd. She had become very good at that sort of thing, she knew, since coming to Braavos, and even before that, when she had tried to convince the whole world that she was Arry, and not Arya Stark.

She glanced behind her after running about a block, and realized that the strange sellsword wasn’t following her. She breathed a sigh of relief, and stopped running, sagging against the wall of the nearest house that she had passed.

But she knew that she had to go back. The Fat Man was still standing in his stall, trying to sell his not great wares to those getting off the ships, and his son was still laying on the cobblestones when a girl had taken off, which meant that perhaps the Fat Man had hurt him more than he had in the past.

Killing the Fat Man was the one good thing that was coming out of this day, she decided, even if it meant she had to kill him in front of so many people.

But of course, that was what the Kindly Man had demanded of her. He wanted to see if she could do it, if she could take a life, without drawing attention to herself.

Because everything was a test, with him. It had to be.

She reached into her pocket, fingers glancing against the needle that the Kindly Man had given her, for this purpose. And she didn’t know if that was some sort of jape, on his behalf, or if it had truly been a coincidence.

She was most aware of the fact that Needle was still sitting in the rocks outside of the House of Black and White, where the Kindly Man could not find that she had kept one of her material possessions from her past life, and where a girl could come back, periodically, and pretend to still remember what it was like to be Arya Stark.

But this was a real needle, one that was long enough to lay against her thigh, and incredibly sharp. The Kindly Man had explained too er that she would only need to stab the Fat Man once, and the needle would do the rest, so long as she knew where to stab it.

It was the sort of thing that brought her no pleasure, but she supposed that the lesson would be useful, knowing how to kill someone like that.

She took a deep breath, though she didn’t feel nervous at the prospect of taking a life, but rather at the thought of killing someone in front of so many witnesses.

She would have to be careful, would have to get close enough to the Fat Man to stab him without a single person noticing, without enough force to be noticed.

She licked her lips as she walked up to the Fat Man’s stall, and found that the boy was standing on his own two feet again. The sellsword and the man he had been talking to were nowhere to be found, and she breathed a sigh of relief, at that.

The Fat Man glanced up, as she neared, and sneered at her. “Get away, street urchin,” he told her. “We’re not a charity, here.”

The Fat Man’s son eyed her underneath his rather long eyelashes, and then glanced down sharply again.

A girl ignored them both, reaching out and touching one of the pieces of meat on the Fat Man’s cart, only for her hand to be slapped away by the Fat Man.

“I told you…” he began, but then a girl was reaching into her pocket, pulling out a purse full of clinking coins.

The Fat Man fell silent.

A girl smirked up at him, as she pulled one of the golden coins, stolen from the Merling Queen’s abode the last time she was there, out of the purse and handed it over.

“What’s your best piece of meat?” She asked the Fat Man, knowing full well from her time spent watching him that the Fat Man kept most of his best meats closest to himself, where he could make sure that they did not dry out under the sun.

The Fat Man pulled out one of said pieces of meat, to hold it out to her, and a girl grimaced, leaning forward over the stall, utilizing some of the skills she had learned while she worked with the Merling Queen to show off some of the cleavage she didn’t quite have yet, and eyed the other pieces of meat on the cart.

The Fat Man didn’t seem to mind, that, and it was his undoing.

He barely noticed as she reached out, the needle grasped in both hands as she hid it from his view, and pushed it into the Fat Man’s side, while freeing one of her hands to touch another piece of meat, as if assessing whether or not it had dried out completely.

The needle was so thin, the Kindly Man had informed her, that the Fat Man would not feel it going into his skin, not until it was far too late.

When she glanced up, one piece of meat in her free hand and setting another gold coin in the hands of the Fat Man’s son, the boy was staring at her with very wide eyes.

A girl grinned at him.

She had already made it halfway down the street when the Fat Man collapsed.

* * *

“He’s dead,” a girl gritted out, as she returned to the House of Black and White, and found the Kindly Man waiting for her, arms crossed over his chest, looking supremely annoyed.

She tried not to let her own annoyance show.

“You did not kill him because he deserved death,” the Kindly Man informed her then, as if she’d had any doubt of that, as far as the Kindly Man was concerned, and a girl grimaced.

But he had, she thought, even if she kept such thoughts to herself.

Well, she was uncertain how well she had managed that, from the way the Kindly Man looked at her.

“I killed him in service to the Many Faced God,” a girl said shortly, because she knew that was what it was expected of her, to say.

Not that she meant it; she didn’t think the Kindly Man believed that she meant it, either, by the look on his face, before it shuttered off completely, in that way that only he seemed capable of.

The Kindly Man let out a grunt, and then motioned for her to come and sit at the edge of the pool with him. She eyed the pool warily as she sat down on the rim beside him, tried not to flinch as he reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder.

She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched her out of kindness, couldn’t remember the last time she had wanted to be touched at all.

It felt strange, knowing that the Kindly Man was not so very kind, after all, having him touch her here, in a place where he had once taken away her vision for good.

“What happened to the Waif for what she did?” A girl asked, because she didn’t want to talk about this any more and because she was truly curious.

She hadn’t seen the Waif since that fateful day when the other girl had admitted that she had told a girl to kill the Merling Queen too early, because she had wanted to get back at a girl for being better than her, at this.

It was starting to…she would not say that it was starting to concern her, because she loathed the other woman, but still, she wondered.

Because she hadn’t seen the Waif since that day when she had returned from killing the Merling Queen, not leaving for some assignment and not preparing the bodies of the dead, or leading those who could barely walk to the pool that had blinded a girl.

She didn’t sleep in the room next door to a girl’s, where she had been sleeping since a girl had arrived here.

It was unsettling, not to know where she was.

Curiosity, she supposed, had finally drove her to ask, days after she had returned.

The Waif had made it clear, though the Kindly Man had not, that they were in some sort of competition, to see which one of them was to be inducted into the ranks of those serving the Many Faced God, those other assassins who had shed their past selves for good and whom a girl hardly ever saw, spending their lives below the great stone floors of the House of Black and White.

But she doubted, with the Waif’s anger every time a girl managed to do as she had been bid, that the Waif had made it their quite yet, especially with the way that she had cheated, something a girl had been too afraid to attempt to reciprocate, given the last time she had been punished for going against the Many Faced God.

She licked her lips after several moments of silence, glancing up at the Kindly Man. “Is she…does she still serve the Many Faced God?”

The Kindly Man eyed her. “A girl does not need to know that information,” he informed her, crisply. “A girl should be concerned with her own journey to serving the Many Faced God, instead.”

A girl ducked her head. “Yes, of course,” she whispered at the stone floor, in lieu of the Kindly Man. But there was still some part of her remaining, and it was that part that forced her to ask, “But does she?”

He let out a long sigh, but when she glanced up at him again, he looked more amused than anything. “She is being led back into the service of the Many Faced God,” he told her, shortly. “And reminded of why her father left her here as a child, in the first place.”

A girl grimaced, because even if that didn’t answer her question about where the Waif was, it sounded terribly ominous, from how the Kindly Man had said it.

She almost felt bad for the other woman, and then she remembered the way the Merling Queen had looked, when Merebeth cut her open.

A girl lifted her chin. “And do you think she’ll understand, then?”

The Kindly Man raised an eyebrow. “That is not for us to speculate,” he said, and then pointed towards the hall of faces. “There are new bodies for a girl to prepare, since you left.”

A girl bit back a goodnatured groan; given what he had just told her about the Waif, she didn’t think he would appreciate hearing it.

And she knew that if he had heard her sigh, she would only be punished for it, because a girl might be useful as a child, but she also knew that she, like the Waif, was becoming something of a hindrance for the Kindly Man.

He had expected her training to go along far better than it so far had, and he was annoyed that she was coming along so slowly, especially when compared to the Waif, who was not doing any better than she, for all her years in the House of Black and White.

And still, as she walked into the hall of faces and prepared herself to start working on the bodies once more, a girl found her curiosity over what was happening to the Waif eating away at her, what sort of punishment the other woman was facing, that required her to be all alone, while the House of Black and White had known of a girl’s own punishment, her blindness not being a secret to anyone.

That night, when she dreamed, she dreamed of the Merling Queen. The Merling Queen, so trusting as she let Merebeth into her chambers, as she sat down and let Merebeth talk, every word calculated to make her vulnerable.

As she lay on the ground beneath a girl, begging for her life before she seemed far too resigned to her fate, for a girl’s liking.

And as she dreamed, that face didn’t turn into Sansa’s, as a girl had been half afraid it would, but into Cersei Lannister’s. Resigned, uncaring that someone had finally brought her to justice.

Tired.

And killing her? It felt resigned, too, as if girl was just going through the motions with the murder, because after all, she had become No One; No One did not care about the fate of a Lannister, because it wasn’t her battle to fight, wasn’t her justice to seek, not anymore.

That was a more terrifying dream than any about the Merling Queen, an innocent woman whom a girl had murdered when she didn’t deserve it.

Again, and again, and again, until a girl woke up halfway out of bed already, gasping, sweat pouring down her body despite the cold of the rooms in the House of Black and White.

With a long, world weary sigh, she got up and tiptoed out of her room without her shoes, so that she would not attract any undue attention, and went out to the pool where they came to die, in Braavos.

She licked her lips, staring down at the glassy waters with the pure relief of knowing that she could see, and then she started, for the longer she stared into the pool, the more obvious the figure in the pool beside her was.

She startled, spinning around, only to find herself face to face with the Waif.

A girl gritted her teeth. “I thought you were busy seeking forgiveness from the Many Faced God,” she muttered darkly, because the sight of the Waif, standing before her equally barefoot and only in a shift, looking as if she hadn’t showered in some days, startled her more than she wanted to admit.

The Waif smirked at her; it didn’t reach her eyes.

Curiosity, a girl had called it.

Now, she wondered if it wasn’t the thirst for revenge that the Kindly Man kept reminding her that she shouldn’t be feeling.

“Funny how you still don’t seem to know a damn thing about the Many Faced God,” the Waif reprimanded her, but a girl was still too annoyed with the way that she had been forced to kill the Merling Queen because of this bitch to rise to the occasion. “He does not grant forgiveness anymore than he does justice.”

A girl narrowed her eyes at the Waif, clenching her fists at her sides at the thought that the Waif had tricked her out of selfish motives, and was now reprimanding her for something. “What does that…”

She blinked, and the Waif was gone.

A girl shuddered, turning and glancing back down at the waters again. In them, the Waif was screaming, the way a girl had been screaming before she awoke from the nightmare of her murdering Cersei.

And a girl knew that she would have ended up murdering the Merling Queen anyway, whether the Waif had tricked her into it too early or not.

But still, she felt anger in her heart towards the other girl.

She hoped that whatever it was the Waif had been punished with, it had scared her as much as the prospect of losing her eyes for good had terrified a girl.

* * *

“I’m afraid the Iron Bank has yet to comment on the matter,” The Sealord said, sounding rather apologetic while his bitch of a wife smirked, beside him at the table, positively preening, and Tyrion felt a bone deep tiredness filling him, at the answer to his question, the same answer that he’d been receiving every day since he had arrived in Braavos, every day since he had actually met with that fucking emissary from the bank. “You know how they can be. Deliberating their options.”

Tyrion gritted his teeth, resisting the urge to let the Sealord know how truly annoying it was, to sit here and wait while King’s Landing most likely rotted behind him.

“Perhaps if I went to speak with them again,” he pointed out, but the Sealord was already shaking his head before he had finished speaking.

Though a part of Tyrion wondered if it was even worth that, at this point; he was low on time, and he knew it, and the Iron Bank knew it, and perhaps he ought to take their lack of a response as answer enough.

Olenna Tyrell was an old woman, but that hardly meant that she had an endless supply of patience, as she had demonstrated amply by declaring war on his sister’s son. No doubt, she would take his lack of response so far as a clear indication that Tyrion had failed, and would decide to just take her chances killing Myrcella and Jaime, now that she had no reason to keep them alive.

Tyrion hadn’t fulfilled his end of the bargain, after all.

And he knew that he ought to be more terrified at that prospect, but the tiredness that had plagued him ever since he had arrived in Braavos and that damned fortune teller had called Shae pregnant, and worse, Shae hadn’t denied the possibility, this tiredness had settled upon him like a cloak.

He knew what was going to happen, there. Unlike Jaime and Myrcella, if it was even still possible to save them at this point, his child, the one in Shae’s womb, was lost.

It was either the child or Shae herself, and Tyrion knew that there was no choice, between the two. He would choose Shae in a heartbeat over a child he’d never had the chance to grow attached to, a child whom the world would hate, most likely, as he had been hated.

And yet, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Couldn’t stop thinking of the what ifs; just because it was common for the child of a dwarf to be another dwarf didn’t mean that it was impossible that any child he had would not be normal, he knew that.

And because of that, he kept dreaming of a golden haired child with Shae’s eyes who lived, just as she did, and it meant that he barely slept these days, shaken from nightmares that should have been happy dreams to glance over at Shae, where she lay beside him, not touching him most nights because she was still angry about what had happened to the girl who was practically their child, in Sansa.

He couldn’t save that child, he would remind himself. He couldn’t risk Shae’s life like that, not after how long it had taken to find someone like her, not when he was still entirely uncertain what he had done to deserve her.

He could save Jaime and Myrcella, though, and that was what he ought to be focusing his attentions on, not a child whom he would never know, and not Jon Connington, up to no good at the Iron Bank for some unknown reason, at the same Iron Bank that was refusing to sell the Lannisters’ loans to the Tyrells, no doubt thinking this some sort of trick since Tyrion himself had come here, as Tyrion might have, but still, he hated them for their hesitation.

He gritted his teeth as he watched the Sealord and his wife exchange glances, looking almost nervous, now.

“I would advise against that, my lord,” he said softly. “If you were to do so, I believe it would have rather the opposite effect than you wish for.” He paused, worrying his lower lip. “The Iron Bank does not like to be dictated to.”

As his sister had made the mistake of learning, the words echoed through the air, and Tyrion winced a little.

Cersei had been a fool, to turn away an emissary of the Iron Bank when the man had come to King’s Landing demanding to know when the bank could collect on its loans, and she ought to have known that there would be consequences for her actions.

But his sister was the sort of woman who didn’t seem to believe that there were consequences for anything that she did, to everyone in their family’s detriment.

That was why they were all in this situation in the first place. If his sister would just learn that she couldn’t have whatever she wanted, they’d all be that much less fucked, he thought, irritation bubbling up within him at the thought.

And he didn’t know if it was truly at her, for proving her maddening sense of entitlement over and over, or at their father, for letting her think that she had that right.

He grimaced; their father was dead, after all, and so it was no use still being angry with him, as much as Tyrion still boiled with it.

Cersei though; Cersei, he could blame for this situation, when she had all but invited it upon them, and he would gladly do so, the moment he was back in King’s Landing, assuming that she did yet again find some new way of slithering out of her latest predicament.

For all that she was an entitled brat at the best of times, his sister did have a way of managing that, though Tyrion couldn’t imagine how she might manage it with her bastard of a son to deal with, as well.

Those who might think her worth the effort, after all, like his fool of a brother, certainly wouldn’t feel the same about Joffrey.

“Thank you,” Tyrion said tightly, sitting back a little bit in his chair. The Sealord blinked at him pleasantly, and Tyrion elaborated, “You’re right, of course.”

The Sealord smiled, reaching out and taking his wife’s hand, and giving it a gentle squeeze. “Well, my wife would say that I am hardly ever that,” he said, and his wife smiled at him for the first time that Tyrion had noticed since he’d arrived at their palace.

The smile, for two moments, seemed almost fond, before it froze over again and she asked Tyrion, “Where is your…lady companion? I have been trying to invite her to tea with me, and she has been most stubborn about not attending. One begins to think that you keep her locked up in her chambers.”

Tyrion had been surprised that she bothered to address him at all until the end of that little speech; then, he was less surprised.

He gave her a thin smile, the sort of smile he would have once given Cersei, he supposed. He wondered if he would ever have cause to smile at his sister again.

“She comes and goes as she pleases,” Tyrion said. “I know that I have her trust, and she mine.”

The woman’s smile froze on her face, and then vanished, and she got to her feet, her attendants, whom Tyrion had been originally uncomfortable with hearing their every conversation, accompanying her.

The Sealord had explained that their attendants were loyal to the death for them, which was quite refreshing, after King’s Landing, where servants stabbed their masters in the back for a few bits of coin, not that Tyrion could even blame most of them.

And then the Sealord’s wife was gone, and her attendants with her, the door shutting silently behind them.

The Sealord let out a long sigh, leaning back in his divan and crossing his arms over his chest. “I am sorry, my friend,” he said, more conversationally than Tyrion had heard from him in some time, “That you had to witness that.”

Tyrion squinted at him, the Sealord smiled, looking for the first time almost embarrassed.

“I am afraid that you’ve caught my wife and I at a most…awkward time, in our marriage,” he explained, still looking shamefaced. He uncrossed his arms, linking his fingers together tightly.

Tyrion grimaced; he knew this tactic rather well, if indeed a tactic was what it was. Luring his captive audience into a false sense of friendship, to get more information out of them.

Then again, he supposed, this could also simply be the Sealord, attempting to explain why his wife had been such a bitch to Tyrion, during this entire trip, though Tyrion had only to look as far as all of the mummer’s plays to find the answer to that.

The Sealord swallowed. “We…our son,” he said, and suddenly his voice was as grim as Tyrion had ever heard it, “We lost him, last summer. Dear boy.”

He paused, for a bit too long, and Tyrion cleared his throat.

“My condolences,” he offered, because the moment felt a bit too real to him, especially now. “How old was he?”

The Sealord grimaced. “Too damn young,” he murmured. Then, “Sixteen summers. Barely a man yet, but he certainly thought he was.” He sighed. “He got into a boating accident with a few of his friends. I understand they were intoxicated. But his mother, bless her, believes this was brought on due to my influence, and I…I can barely stand to look at her, knowing that she blames me for our son’s death.”

Tyrion shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“I am certain she will forgive you,” he offered, and didn’t mention that there was something of the Sealord’s wife which reminded him a bit of Cersei, though they looked nothing like one another, and that Cersei had never forgiven her husband for loving another woman before her.

The Sealord shook his head, leaning back in the divan.

“She won’t,” he said, and there was a cold certainty to that which sent shivers up Tyrion’s spine. He felt a stab of pity for the other man, but his thoughts were on the way Shae had looked at him, when he told her that they were leaving Sansa behind with the Tyrells, not two days after he’d told her he wouldn’t trust the Tyrells with a dog.

The Sealord bit his lip. “There will be no more sons, not for us,” he gestured down at his rather obese belly. “I am too old for it, and I am told that down in the city, they have already begun making bets on who my successor will be, because I am surely not healthy enough to hold onto this role for long.”

Tyrion swallowed. “You seem well enough to me,” he said, thinking of how the Grandmaester was still rolling around King’s Landing with far too much ease.

He wondered how long it would take the Tyrells to decide what to do with that old man, for he was rather a slippery old fellow.

The Sealord snorted, patting his belly. “Well, it is kind of you to say so,” he said, sounding amused more than anything, “But I think this also has to do with the fact that my wife no longer shares my bed, and that I must find my pleasures in the beds of others.”

Tyrion grimaced, remembering the way the Sealord had all but salivated over the Merling Queen, and supposed he could understand a bit more why he had been so obvious about it, at the time.

The Sealord eyed him. “I think you may know something of that,” he said, tone far too knowing, and Tyrion grimaced.

“My lady Shae and I are quite comfortable in our rooms actually,” he quipped, because he wasn’t certain that he wanted to open up, to offer whatever information it was that the Sealord was clearly looking for, when he still had his suspicions about the man’s friendliness.

The Sealord smiled at him, a hint of the intelligence which had made the Iron Bank choose him in the first place showing on his face. “Ah, but I was speaking of your wife, Lord Tyrion, not your beautiful lover.”

Tyrion went very still, at those words. “Oh?” He asked, to cover the fact that he was actually surprised the Sealord was asking.

The man had made a point not to mention Sansa, since Tyrion’s arrival here, perfectly accepting of the woman on Tyrion’s arm, and a part of Tyrion had been absurdly grateful for it.

The Sealord’s smile was sympathetic, now. “I understand that she, too, does not share your bed.”

Tyrion lifted a brow. “I’m not sure what business it is of yours,” he said, at which point the Sealord rather showed his hand by offering him some more wine.

Tyrion refused, yet again.

“I was just of the belief that the two of us might be…sympathetic to one another, in our situations. I do not blame you at all for the tales told about you, for you do not seem that sort of man to me,” the Sealord explained. “And I think you see in me someone who might one day be a friend to you. And that that sympathy might extend to…other areas.”

Tyrion blinked at him, bemused. “I don’t…”

“I have an interest in seeing certain trades expanded in Westeros, once power has been consolidated there,” the Sealord explained, and it was all it took for Tyrion not to groan, at the words.

Of course that was what this was about.

Tyrion pursed his lips. “I am overtired,” he said, getting to his feet. “Though what you say, of course, has caught my ear. Perhaps we might speak of it more later, after the Iron Bank has given me their response?”

The Sealord’s eyes flashed in annoyance.

“I hope that you are feeling better,” the Sealord said then, gesturing to Tyrion’s swollen nose, and Tyrion grimaced.

He hadn’t bothered to explain where he had gotten the broken nose, worried that the Sealord might try to get retribution on his behalf. Or, worse than that, might not do anything about it at all, and reveal his true colors.

Tyrion had already figured him out, of course, but he couldn’t have the Sealord finding that out, not before the Iron Bank gave him their damn answer.

He reached up, rubbing at his nose. He supposed that it went along with the scar he’d gotten from the Battle of Blackwater. It couldn’t possibly make him look worse, in any case.

“I’m fine,” he said. “The healers say that I should heal well, all things considered, so long as I don’t get into another fight with a pole.”

The Sealord, whom Tyrion doubted had believed that excuse for a moment, laughed merrily at his words.

“Well, I shall endeavor to help you with that, if I can,” he provided. “My First Sword has offered his services, in tracking down any more interested…poles.”

Tyrion rolled his eyes. “I think I shall survive without such assistance,” he said, annoyed yet again that they were speaking of such unimportant things rather than the fact that he needed his answer from the Bank, now.

But that was how this game was played, after all.

The Sealord’s smile was sharp. “Oh, but I insist,” he said. “The First Sword will follow you wherever you need to go, in the city. None would dare to bother with him.”

Tyrion pursed his lips; he supposed he should have expected this from the moment he arrived here, and it was not as if the Bank did not have people following him already, trying to figure out his game.

At least this way, they would be more obvious about it, and Tyrion would not have to pretend that he did not see their tail.

“Thank you,” he said to the Sealord, and thought that they might have even been friends, in another life, perhaps.

Then again, perhaps not. There were some things about this old man that reminded him a bit of Robert Baratheon, and the two of them had never been friends.

* * *

“Gods, I’m tired of these Braavosi,” Tyrion said, slumping down onto the bed beside Shae after passing Bronn and Pod on the way in here.

It was the first time he had actually caught Bronn guarding this door since they’d arrived, though he had a feeling that had more to do with the older man wanting to talk to Pod than his actually doing as Tyrion had asked.

Shae glanced over at him where she sat looking at a book that he doubted she was actually reading, for he knew damn well that she had only a cursory knowledge of reading in any case, and that mostly from Sansa’s tutelage in King’s Landing, looking vaguely amused.

He wished she would feel something a bit more profound than that when she looked at him, these days.

He missed her.

What they had together right now, it felt like a rift that would never heal again, and Tyrion wasn’t sure how much longer he could endure the thought of touching her but never feeling her reach for him again.

Gods, he was tired.

And he shouldn’t be focusing on any of this, because there was the far more pressing issue fo the fact that the Tyrells were marching even now on King’s Landing, and that they were very likely to kill his brother and his niece if he didn’t give them what they wanted; utter control of King’s Landing.

That wasn’t completely why he was here, either, but what he had learned about the rest of it? Had convinced him that was at least unattainable, which meant that his lot was with the Tyrells now, for as little as he trusted them.

“You poor dear,” Shae said, reaching out for him, and he practically fell against her, feeling only slightly ashamed by it.

He’d missed her, after all.

She hummed, running her fingers through his hair, and he leaned into the touch, closing his eyes. If he kept his eyes closed, he could pretend things between them were as they had been. That she wasn’t mad at him for abandoning Sansa, that she wasn’t pregnant with a child that could kill her, if she carried it to term.

“What is it this time?” She asked, and he wondered if she even realized what she was doing, that she hadn’t done this in so long and normally shied away from him, recently, in her annoyance with him.

“I have a tail, now,” Tyrion said. “I’m not entirely certain how it happened, actually. One moment, the Sealord was talking about how his wife doesn't respect him, and in the next, I had a tail for all of our excursions outside of the Palace.”

Shae hummed. “Well, I think you’ll be able to lose them, as you have the others.”

He eyed her. “Is that why you haven’t been out of the palace?” He asked her, knowingly, and Shae hummed.

“I think I’ve just become something like shy, after all of the time I’ve spent indoors in King’s Landing,” she admitted, and Tyrion snorted.

He didn’t think he would ever describe her as shy.

“It’s the First Sword,” he said, not even bothering to respond to her words. “I don’t think we’ll be able to lose him so easily.”

“So the Bank doesn’t trust you,” Shae surmised, and Tyrion groaned.

“You’d think they could just give me a straight answer, or ask me the questions they so clearly want to know,” he muttered, “instead of all of this damned subterfuge when I need an answer so quickly. I doubt they left Stannis Baratheon waiting this long.”

Shae hummed. “Such is the Iron Bank, that we must all bow before their whims.”

“Yes, well, I hope I don’t lose everything I’ve asked for, by the time we finally get their response,” Tyrion sighed again, leaning a little more into her touch.

He didn’t know how long they sat like that, in silence, Tyrion enjoying the feel of her against him, before he found himself dozing off, and dreaming of that same golden haired child who kept invading his dreams, these days.

He grimaced; Shae glanced down at him.

“Is something wrong, my lion?” She asked, gently, and he swallowed hard, couldn’t remember the last time she had called him that.

And then he smelled her breath, and realized why she was being so much more affectionate with him tonight than usual.

“How long have you been drinking?” He asked her, for she had been the one to grow so annoyed with him over his excessive drinking, in the past.

She sighed. “Not long enough to be drunk,” she admitted, and sounded rather sad about the fact.

Tyrion sighed, deciding that it wasn’t as if he had any room to judge her for such a thing, after all, and closing his eyes again, because he wanted to tell her everything he was thinking because carrying it alone was becoming far too tiresome, and he didn’t want to look at her as he said it.

“If I tell you something,” Tyrion whispered hoarsely, “Will you promise not to loathe me for it?”

Shae swallowed so loudly that he could hear it. He opened his eyes, found her staring down at him, looking conflicted.

“I’m angry with you. But I don’t loathe you for leaving Sansa behind,” she whispered, and Tyrion blinked at her, tempted to sit up in surprise but not wanting to leave the relative warmth of her arms, of her lap, when there was no guarantee that she would want to touch him again.

“Don’t you?”

She scoffed at him. “How like a man,” she said, and Tyrion sighed a bit, “to think that just because he has done something stupid, it so affects me. No, I do not loathe you, you stupid man, because I still love you, gods help me.”

Tyrion swallowed hard.

Love.

He remembered a time when he had heard Sansa and Shae talking in Sansa’s rooms, when neither of them seemed to think that he could hear, and they were talking of love.

Sansa had asked Shae how one knew if they were in love, and Shae had said that she didn’t know for certain yet, but that she thought it was when one thought they couldn’t live without the other person, and those words had stuck with Tyrion for far too long, for he had already believed himself half in love with her already, and she had been unsure, even then.

And now, she was saying that she loved him.

It wasn’t the first time; she had used the word in other scenarios, though never quite as serious as this one.

But this one…this one was the one that mattered, to his mind.

And it made what he was about to say that much easier to force through his lips.

“I wish…” he bit his lip, wondering what sort of man he was, to admit this to her at all. “I want to keep this child, Shae.” He didn’t look at her as he said it, because he knew how selfish it was, when his own mother had suffered so, to bring him into this world. “I want us to…I want us to have a child. Our child.”

Silence.

When he looked at her again, Shae was carefully schooling her expression, the way that she did in public when people wondered why the Imp’s whore seemed so cold to him, of late, the way she always had in King’s Landing, pretending to be Sansa’s lady’s maid, and nothing more.

“I’ve been dreaming about a little boy, ever since that fortune teller told us that you were…” he licked his lips, faltering a bit when Shae’s expression still hadn’t changed. “A boy that’s healthy. Normal. Not…like me. And I know…I know it’s unlikely, and I know it’s unrealistic, but I can’t stop dreaming about it.”

Shae got to her feet, sliding him off of her and down onto the bed as she did so, and moved until her back was to him.

Tyrion felt his stomach drop a little, at the blatant rejection.

“Is that why you’ve taken to drinking at night, when you promised that you would stop, in Highgarden?” Shae whispered, and there was something so broken about her words that he wanted to reach out and touch her, but he wasn’t certain that she would accept it, not now, not after what he had just admitted.

That he wanted a child that could very well kill her, as they both knew had happened to his mother.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” he breathed, staring at her back, watching the rigid lines of her shoulders in silence. “I never…before, I never gave a damn. I never thought it would be possible. And yet…Shae…Say something, please.”

She was still standing like that, with her back to him, and it was driving him mad.

Finally, she turned around, reaching up to wipe at her eyes, though he didn’t see tears in them, only wetness. She licked her lips before speaking.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said, softly. Then, as his face crumbled before her, “Tyrion, I love you. If I thought that I could have your child and that child would survive, that I would survive, that that child wouldn’t be miserable at the hands of your enemies because it had survived, I would want it in a heartbeat, surely you know that.” Her eyes were watery, now, he could tell. “But what does knowing it matter, if we can never have that?”

Tyrion let out an explosive breath, sagging down a little bit on the bed rather than reaching for her, as a part of him had wanted to moments ago.

“I…you’re right,” he whispered, and hated how pained he felt over something he had known from the start he could never have. “Of course you’re right.”

“I think,” Shae said, slowly, “Perhaps we need to get out of this place for a little while.”

Tyrion raised an eyebrow, remembering what the Sealord’s wife had said about her rebuffing her invitations to tea, something that it was not as if Shae received often in King’s Landing.

“You want to go into the city tomorrow?” He asked her, ad thought that might be nice, to stop thinking about politics and the child they coudln’t have together for a little while, and having Shae there might make it easier to do so.

“I thought you might like to see Lorath,” Shae said, shaking her head, and Tyrion blinked at her in some surprise at the words.

Lorath. He hadn’t expected her to want to go back to that place, where she had been born. She had made it rather clear that she loathed that place, for the things that she had endured from her father while she lived there.

The few times that she had ever mentioned Lorath, Tyrion had gotten the impression that there was much she wasn’t saying, though he had never tried to push her for more information.

But when he had first mentioned that they were going to Braavos, on the road from Highgarden, she had seemed less than thrilled about the idea of going there at all, until he explained to her that he wasn’t very interested in coming back.

She wasn’t happy with him, but he got the impression that she would indeed like to leave with him and not come back.

She’d always wanted that, of course, from the moment he’d started hiding her in King’s Landing out of fear that his father or his sister might find out about her and do to her what he had done to Tysha, or worse. Braavos wasn’t quite Lorath, not for her.

He should have just gone with her, back then, Tyrion thought, with a grimace. Things would have been so much simpler if they’d escaped together before he married Sansa, before he found himself wrapped up in all of the things that came with that, including dealing with Joffrey and his madness.

She turned around then, not seeming to notice the conflict on Tyrion’s face, as she reached out and taking Tyrion’s hands into hers.

“Oh, come on,” she said, still smiling, and dear gods, he hadn’t seen her smile enough lately. It almost made him want to forget the rest of his troubles, toss her onto that bed, and have his way with her. “The Iron Bank is going to take their sweet time, in getting back to you, it seems. We might as well enjoy ourselves, while we’re here.”

It almost made him forget that he might not appreciate her doing so.

He smiled, slowly. “I think it’s probably for the best that we remain here,” he said, slowly, and saw something of the light that had been so distant in her eyes return again. “I need…I need to know that the Iron Bank will respond, and soon.”

He tried his best to keep his voice gentle as he reached out for her, took her hands in his own. “Shae,” he said softly, spreading his arms when she didn’t respond to his touch, “They’re still my family. I need to make sure that they’re protected.”

And Shae…reached down, placing a hand on her stomach and glancing away. “Your family?” She echoed. “You’re here to hand the Iron Throne over to the Tyrells. To ensure that your family loses the last of its power in King’s Landing. What the fuck do you mean, that you’re here for your family?”

He swallowed hard, clasping her hands again. “Shae, my brother is still in King’s Landing. Tommen and Myrcella? They’re innocents. Children. And whatever Joffrey and my bitch of a sister have done, Tommen and Myrcella, Jaime? I’m doing this to protect them. I’m doing it, handing the godsdamned throne over to the Tyrells, for them!”

Shae flinched. “And you’re killing your nephew and your sister to do it,” she said, and this time, it was Tyrion who flinched, because he hadn’t expected her to try to defend Cersei, of all people, or even Joffrey.

“ _They’re_ killing this family,” he said, perhaps colder than he meant to, because at his words, Shae removed the hand on her stomach completely. “Not me. I’ve only ever done what I could to save this fucking family, and the two of them are determined to put us all in the ground. So that is how I’m going to save this family.”

Gods, he couldn’t even say the words. Couldn’t even articulate what it was he was doing here, in order to save this family.

But he thought perhaps she understood just a little, if the way that she was looking at him, with very wide eyes, was any indication.

He licked his lips. “Not so long ago,” he said, very quietly, “Cersei told me that I was not her family. That I was the thing that had killed her family.”

Shae flinched again, and now, she was gazing down at her hands, twisted in her lap, rather than at Tyrion at all. She looked strangely guilty, though he didn’t dare think on that too long, as she sat on the edge of the bed and refused to look at him.

Instead, he continued trying to convince her, because out of everyone that he might have told, he had thought that she, at least, would understand. But she didn’t, and it terrified him, that look in her eyes just before she looked away from him.

“To me, she and Joffrey? They’ve become that,” he whispered, and Shae sniffled, reaching up to rub at her lips awkwardly. “And I’m here, helping give this power to the Tyrells, because I want to protect what they’re destroying. I’m trying to make sure that our family survives.”

Shae scoffed, jaw clenching. “Tyrion,” she said, very slowly, and there was something very painful in her voice, though he didn’t quite understand why, when she had never liked his family, save for perhaps Jaime, the only one with whom she’d had much contact, “What do you think that your brother will do, when he finds out that you knowingly plotted with the Tyrells to murder Cersei? To murder their son?”

Tyrion flinched.

That had been the one thing that he had not concentrated on, the whole time he had been formulating this plan in his mind, the one thing he wouldn’t let himself consider, because he knew that she was right.

But he knew that in the end, as he stood before Olenna Tyrell and she gave him her ultimatum, that he was always going to choose this path.

His brother could hate him for as long as he wanted, so long as he was alive to do it, and Tyrion knew that he could live with that. That he would live with that.

“Shae…” he began, but he truly didn’t know how to finish that thought aloud, for it sounded too horrible, too unhealthy, and he didn’t want to admit it aloud.

Cersei, for all her faults, was still a mother, a mother of two children who would live when she would not, and they would live to one day find out, as their father would, what he had done, if he continued down this path.

Because the Iron Bank would only side with the Tyrells, who had no claim to the Iron Throne, if they had a very strong reason for doing so, had strong reason to believe that the Lannisters would not be able to fight back.

He swallowed hard, then, “I am doing this for him,” he murmured, softly, and Shae swallowed hard and looked away, then.

Shae lifted her chin. “And what are you going to do when its over?” She whispered, and her voice was reedy, shredded as she spoke. Tyrion flinched a little. “When the Tyrells have the Iron Throne, and control your nephew? When they have finished getting their revenge on Joffrey, on Cersei? When your brother hates you for what you’ve agreed to?” She stood to her feet then, throwing her hands up in the air. “How long does it go on, Tyrion, this fight, for your family or for power, whichever one you want at the time? How long do you keep climbing over the bodies of the dead to protect something that no longer exists?”

Tyrion winced, and this time, it was his turn to look away. “Shae…”

“How long does it go on, Tyrion?” She demanded. “Until we’re all dead?”

He shot her an annoyed glance. “Hopefully not,” he muttered, but the look that she gave him was entirely unamused.

He reached up and rubbed at his eyes. Because she was right; for a time, a long time, that was all he had wanted. He hadn’t been thinking much about his family when he smugly informed Cersei that he was the acting Hand of the King, and that he had the power in King’s Landing now, not her. He hadn’t been thinking about his family…

But he had. He had, he knew that. He had sought power to protect his family, not like their father, who had sought power to protect the family name.

To Tyrion, there was a difference.

She sighed. “I’m tired,” she whispered. “I just…I’m tired of sitting back and watching you cling to this family, Tyrion, because they’re your family. I’m tired of watching you justify everything you do by that. I’m tired of the Lannisters. I’m just…tired.”

He gritted his teeth. “Shae…” he took a deep breath. “This is who I am. I’ve aways been like this, since the moment I met you. I thought you understood that.”

She shook her head. “I understood that you were good at playing the game,” she admitted. “I understood that you would do anything to keep playing the game, because you enjoyed it. But Tyrion…you’re not playing the game anymore. You’re losing it. And I’m tired of watching you lose when between the two of us, we could stay here and win.”

“I thought you were the one who was so disgusted that I was leaving half of my family to rot!” He snapped, and perhaps he shouldn’t have shouted, based on the way that Shae’s face shuttered with the words, but he couldn’t help it, not when her argument didn’t seem to make a lick of sense.

He wondered if that was because she was pregnant, and he grimaced at the thought.

She reached up, pressing two fingers against her forehead. “You left Sansa in Highgarden-”

“Back to this again?” Tyrion scoffed. “Dear gods, Shae! They’ll treat her like a fucking princess! When I said I didn’t trust them, I meant with my brother’s life, not with Sansa’s!”

Shae pursed her lips. “They treated her like a princess in King’s Landing for a time too, you know. And she was alone when they stopped treating her like a princess, and she’s alone now.”

Tyrion pinched the bride of his nose.

Here he was, thinking that they could have one godsbedamned conversation that wasn’t about Sansa Stark, these days.

One would almost think that Shae loved her instead of him, at this point.

“I wouldn’t have left her there if I didn’t think she was safe,” he muttered, because he supposed it was all right that they were talking in circles if at least they were talking. Because this was what Shae wanted, and he wanted their child to live more than he ought to, and so both of them were miserable. “And besides, Brienne of Tarth is with her. My brother says we can trust her with Sansa’s life.”

“I think you left her there because you were afraid of what she was becoming,” Shae spat out, and Tyrion blinked at her, thrown. “Because you saw something in her, that night when you discovered those letters she sent to Stannis Baratheon, and it terrified you, so you dumped her off on the first people you could find whom you knew wouldn’t torment her the way Joffrey has, and you ran.”

Tyrion gritted his teeth, fists clenching at his sides as he got off the bed now, as well, to stand before her.

He didn’t know what he had expected from her, when he admitted to her that he wished they could have the child in her belly even if there was some risk that it might kill her, but he supposed it hadn’t been this, not at all.

“Sansa is a child,” he said, softly. “I’m not afraid of her. I’m afraid for her.”

“Are you?” Shae lifted a brow. “That wasn’t the impression I got, when you dragged her off to Highgarden because you feared what she might attempt against Joffrey, next.”

Tyrion pursed his lips, not liking to be reminded of that fact.

“What do you do in here all day, Shae?” He demanded, into the silence. “The Sealord’s wife tells me that you’ve rebuffed her every effort to reach out to you, and I know that you don’t go down into the city. You just sit in this room, all day, like you have since the Sealord brought us here.”

And before him, Shae’s face transformed, from one of anger to one of fury.

He’d never been quite able to pinpoint the difference in those two emotions so easily on someone’s face before this moment.

Shae lifted her chin. “You think I’m spending too much time in this room?” She demanded, moving towards the door, and Tyrion sighed as she threw it open, ignoring the scandalized look on Pod’s face, where he stood waiting at his self-imposed place outside their door, as she did so.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Tyrion muttered, taking a step towards her. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to Lorath,” she snapped, lifting her chin as she stared down at him. “Either with you, or on my own, if I have to. But I’m going.”

And with that, she turned and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

A moment later, Bronn passed by Pod and walked in, two large glasses of ale in his hand. He slumped down onto the bed in the same place that Shae had been sitting moments before, ignoring the look that Tyrion shot him utterly as he held one of those glasses out to him.

“Well, I hate to be the one to say this,” Bronn muttered, eying him, “But from what I’ve heard, you’re being a stupid fuck.”

Tyrion blinked at him. And then he tossed back the ale in his glass with a loud groan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think!


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